Survey posted 2005-03-28 14:18 by Jon.

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Rechargables would be nice, and besides, that's what ALL calc's origionally ran on!

That and the ones that run entirely on solar cells...I hated those calcs...

The TI-36X Solar runs in extremely low lighting conditions (low enough that the screen was almost unreadable, & the text on the buttons certainly was) (at least, mine did when it still worked - now the screen is broken). On the other hand, the TI-36X Solar makes a cool pattern when one puts 200KV through it. :)

Was the calculator borken *before* you applied 200KV to it, or did it break *because* you applied 200KV?

I think a calculator with a long lasting Li-Ion battery would be a good idea, just plug it into the wall when it gets low. The GBA-SP worked really well power-wise, so I think it would work just as well for a calc.

One word....Nuclear

You would never have to change the batteries....ever!!

Unless, of course, you overclocked it by a huge amount, cooled it with liquid nitrogen, & programmed it to have artificial intelligence. :)

That won't work....because then you'll need more buttons.

An AI calculator shouldn't need any buttons at all.

It reads your thoughts! :^)
The cool buttons would just be for show.

They actually have nuclear-pile batteries that release as little as 1 mrad of radiatiation. However, I have no idea if they come in AAA size and release only 1.5 V. It would be mighty convenient if they did.

Nuclear betteries add new credence to the prase "do not incinerate of or dispose in fire."

Then the calculators could have internet access through broadband over powerlines (BPL) :D...

What's the point? One of the main features of graphing calcs is their portability. I can't really see carrying around an AC adapter in my pocket and plugging in my calc if I'm going to be doing a lot of calculations at one time. If the adapter was integrated into the calc, it would make it much larger and heavier. I can understand wanting to leave the calc charging overnight, or be able to charge the batteries if you're going somewhere, but in both cases, it's easier just to use a battery charger. Take the batteries out of the calc (maybe use a spare set of batteries or rely on the backup battery for calcs without flash), charge them, then put them back in - fairly simple.

Here is an idea. Why don't we just use a Gameboy DS and see if we can get Nintendo to give use the program that they use to make the games and program a calc for it. The only thing that we need now is the cartage thing for it, and of course a way to connect to the Internet. Problem solved: rechargeable batteries and Internet.

I don't know about DS, but I know there's a good GBA programming community out there. They don't have a good compiler...all the coding has to be done in notepad and then run through a batch file, unless I just wasn't looking in the right place. As for getting a cartridge, you can get flash cartridges of pretty much any size off ebay or amazon. They cost a lot, but they can fit lots of programs. It's not legal to get true GBA games on these, but it is perfectly legal to write something and stick it on there. All you would really need is software to do the calculations. Plus, entering numbers in might not be the most fun way to do this...it'd work better on a DS, but I don't know if this would work on there...do GBA games work on a DS?

Yes

Lithium Ion power cell, AC adapter that charges it. All I ask. It's cheap to implement, and results in happy customers (namely, me).

Oh, and for all you communists who are going to complain about having to wait for a recharge cycle, with the minimal power usage you calculator has, one could literally go for months without recharging.

yeah really...and it could charge overnight...if you just charge it once a month while you were sleeping...problem solved...well, not the "TI not doing what their customers want" problem, but the power problem...

Why not just use rechargable batteries? Then you also have the charger and can use it for other things that involve batteries. This keeps the price from going up, as you only need one set of rechargable batteries (if you charge them overnight)...plus it only takes an hour to charge them.

That's actually what I do now. But NiMH batteries are considerable less long lasting, have a shorter overall lifetime, and take 8 hours to charge in my charger. I have to recharge bi-weekly with NiMH rechargeables.

I use alkaline - those energizer rechargables - and I don't have any problem with my batteries lasting less time than anyone else's. I've recharged about 10 times now, and they still last me for about two months, unless I've been playing games a lot on it...trust physics to do that to you.