Editing Talk:768: 1996

The only problem with the N-Spire series is that you have to boot it up. Another problem (ok, the nspires are riddled with problems) is that they are still terribly underpowered compared to the modern mobile device. The last is that they are still objects of mass blunt-force trauma, meaning they are still unwieldy bricks, you now have to wait for 2 minutes while your calculator boots up (''!!''), it's still a low resolution screen, and the processor is still clocked somewhere under 500 MHz.

Now, if T.I. made an android app that offered the entirety of their graphing and CAS functionality they could easily charge $70 and everyone I know (I go to an engineering university) would buy it with no regrets.

--[[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]<span title="I'm an admin. I can help.">_a</span> ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]])  23:04, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

They'll never do that - profs (not to mention high school teachers) would freak out! If that's not yet the only reason dedicated-hardware graphing calculators still exist, it soon will be. {{unsigned ip|24.218.167.129}}
:Why? Why they would freak out? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.107|173.245.48.107]] 22:18, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
::I can think of a couple reasons: I can't imagine many teachers or professors allowing students to use their smartphones in an exam scenario. (Honest sir, I'm only using my calculator app!). A large proportion of profs I've dealt with tend to be creatures of habit, with a certain resistance to change. Rightly or wrongly they know the existing calculators work, so why change. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 09:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
:::Wait. Are you telling me I can get a college degree for the price of a calculator case and someone to fit a phone in it?
::On 'allowable calculators', I went into exams ({{w|General Certificate of Secondary Education|GCSE}}s) in the UK with a {{w|Casio FX-702P}}. I always showed the teacher/invigilator that it had no programs pre-stored in it (not that they'd have known if I'd written P0 to display the 'fact' that I hadn't any programs currently stored).
::TI didn't seem to be as big a name over here, at the time (or not yet won the equivalent contest to the VHS/Betamax Wars, in which our family allegience was firmly allied with the technically superior {{w|Video 2000}} format!) and, though still low-powered when compared to the {{w|BBC Micro|BBC Acorn}} computer (as ubiquitous in schools as budgets allowed, i.e. one of them for a Primary School moved between classes on a trolley, while the Secondary School had maybe a half-dozen in one room, shared between 30+ kids at a time), it was a true miracle in the pocket.
::But that was when having a digital watch with a 'driving game' on it (oversized buttons for left and right lane-switching, and LCD elements to simplistically show the road ahead and any 'cars' you had to avoid driving into at ever increasing refresh rates!) was the easiest way to become popular with the class. Never had one myself. Or the calculator watch, that someone else had. I think I had one that showed the temperature, but that was never as impressive as it might have seemed when I first got it from {{w|Argos (retailer)|Argos}}... Oh, crazy days! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 00:09, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 21:22, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

:TI has, in fact, already made a [http://education.ti.com/en-GB/aus-nz/nspire-family/ipad TI-Nspire iPad app] (but there's nothing official for Android). --[[User:Qwach|Qwach]] ([[User talk:Qwach|talk]]) 19:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
:: If we're talking about apps, then Maxima for Android is all you need. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.196|108.162.212.196]] 23:45, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

This explanation misses an important point of the comic's punchline: back in the mid-'90s, you would spend lots of cash for something that, by today's standards, is underpowered. While the observation about the state of changing technology between then and now is valid, the punchline to the comic is that in the case of TI calculators, not only has the *technology* not moved forward, but the *price* hasn't changed either! Nobody would nowadays pay 3000 dollars for the 100MHz Pentium machine mentioned in the comic, but people still spend 100 dollars on a 10MHz calculator. Madness. This is why the characters stumble over the "Times sure have changed" sentiment because, in the TI case, nothing has changed at all. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.81.216|141.101.81.216]] 09:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

My TI-84 Plus is 95 x 63 pixels, rather than 96 x 64. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.209|108.162.246.209]] 02:21, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Did you look under the battery holder? Perhaps a pixel broke loose and slipped under there. {{unsigned ip|199.27.133.123}}

The operating system hides the last row and column of pixels from you, particularly on the graph screen, giving the appearance that it's 95x63, but it really is 96x64. Also, the original version of this comic had the dimensions at 96x62, but Randall later fixed it to the correct 96x64.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.216|108.162.237.216]] 20:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

It is worth noting that it takes exactly 768 bytes to store an image of the screen, and there are several 768 byte buffers used by the OS for saving the screen. I don't know the comic number is on purpose, but it's certainly quite appropriate. --[[Special:Contributions/73.176.149.27|73.176.149.27]] 03:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

reminds me of the SMBC comic proposing that the price of graphing calculators is so stable they could be used as a backup currency --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.197|172.70.230.197]] 07:55, 3 February 2023 (UTC)