Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

[CR Haeger]

At least for the promo video, TI looks like they are mimicking the HP Prime...

TI84 Plus CE promo

[Gerald H]

Yes, in some respects similar, the keyboard however seems to be extremely strange, sort of, I don't know the word, like I could read the blurred icons, but they proved to be words!

[leprechaun]

somehow it just "looks" like a School toy. I mein the whole advertisement suggests nothing but School.
The prime however does not which could be the reason that some people expected too much from the Prime.
Fighting casio and ti primarily in the school domain was a decision made bei HP..worth being discussed.... I would have invested more from the start. Personally. But I am no manager. The development team is able to push the Prime far beond. If they focus on that and if they are let..
Don't only count on the school sales. There is a lot of reputation.

[Don Shepherd]

(04-20-2015 02:44 PM)CR Haeger Wrote:  TI looks like they are mimicking the HP Prime...

Rather like HP mimicking the TI-NSpire.

[Han]

(04-20-2015 04:09 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  

(04-20-2015 02:44 PM)CR Haeger Wrote:  TI looks like they are mimicking the HP Prime...

Rather like HP mimicking the TI-NSpire.

I own an nSpire and like it quite a bit (though more so as a tinkering toy than a calculator). I don't see how anyone could think the Prime mimicks the nSpire other than the fact that they both sport color screens and use rechargeable batteries. The nSpire has a terrible keyboard (tiny keys? whose fingers are that small?), a not-very-responsive clickpad, uses "documents" and is fairly thick. The Prime has a touchscreen, a not-so-legible keyboard (but at least the keys are big), is thin, and does not have a "document" file system.

[Don Shepherd]

(04-20-2015 04:48 PM)Han Wrote:  

(04-20-2015 04:09 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  Rather like HP mimicking the TI-NSpire.

I own an nSpire and like it quite a bit (though more so as a tinkering toy than a calculator). I don't see how anyone could think the Prime mimicks the nSpire other than the fact that they both sport color screens and use rechargeable batteries. The nSpire has a terrible keyboard (tiny keys? whose fingers are that small?), a not-very-responsive clickpad, uses "documents" and is fairly thick. The Prime has a touchscreen, a not-so-legible keyboard (but at least the keys are big), is thin, and does not have a "document" file system.

Hi Han.

I got an NSpire when they first came out, I think in 2007, and thought it was an interesting calculator for its time. The keys are small, but I adjusted to them, even with my big fingers. It was a black-and-white screen in those days, and I never upgraded when they came out with the color screen. I did some BASIC programming on the early NSpire, and programming was severely crippled by a lack of any input or output commands, but I think they fixed that eventually. Now I understand it supports Lua, which I find interesting too but have never learned. What it really needed was a touchscreen, the clickpad is just not natural. The filing system worked fine for me.

When the Prime was announced a couple of years ago, from its description I remember thinking it was sort of an NSpire copycat. Other than a touchscreen and color, I didn't see much difference except, of course, the NSpire worked. From all the Prime bug reports, it seemed that not much testing went on before it was released, and I'm not surprized. Developers don't do significant testing on new products like they did when I was a programmer, they leave it to beta testers to find the bugs, and that is probably not a wise idea. Programmers need to take responsibility for their product.

I found the Casio Prizm interesting too. I had a unit that teachers could use for a few months, so I played with it but returned it eventually.

What I really like is the "old HP iron," the 65, 17b, 12c, those are built to last a lifetime.

[Manolo Sobrino]

Well, it's exactly the same layout than that of the 83 Plus from 1999. These models have been around for a while. Better specs, but basically the same calculator. I don't know why anybody would see this as an imitation. Actually its looks are closer to the industrial design of their 2011 Nspire CX more than to their previous TI-84+CSE. Too bad EE is a secondary key, except for this they are very usable calcs.

Not everybody in this business revolves around HP... TI are just doing their thing, as Casio did before, both are doing fine BTW.

[CR Haeger]

Sorry folks. Just thought the video looked like the HP prime promo from a couple of years ago.

I know the calculators themselves function very differently.

[Don Shepherd]

(04-21-2015 10:23 AM)CR Haeger Wrote:  Sorry folks. Just thought the video looked like the HP prime promo from a couple of years ago.

I know the calculators themselves function very differently.

CR, I'm sure all these calculator promotion videos look similar, the original NSpire video from 1977 as well. The Prime and NSpire are CAS calculators, this latest TI model is not, that's the principal difference. But the new TI will undoubtedly be priced like the CAS models, unfortunately. TI makes huge profits on these machines; parents buy them because their kids' teachers recommend them and no one is willing to jeopardize his child's education by not spending a few bucks.

[Marcus von Cube]

(04-21-2015 12:53 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  ...the original NSpire video from 1977 as well.

Do you have a link? Must be ASCII graphics on a 300 Baud BBS back then.

[CR Haeger]

(04-22-2015 10:35 AM)Marcus von Cube Wrote:  

(04-21-2015 12:53 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  ...the original NSpire video from 1977 as well.

Do you have a link? Must be ASCII graphics on a 300 Baud BBS back then.

Maybe beta or VHS.

[Don Shepherd]

(04-22-2015 10:35 AM)Marcus von Cube Wrote:  

(04-21-2015 12:53 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  ...the original NSpire video from 1977 as well.

Do you have a link? Must be ASCII graphics on a 300 Baud BBS back then.

Oh, wow, sorry about that date. I was only off by 30 years! The NSpire came out in 2007, 8 years ago, not 38 years ago!

I can't find their 2007 promo video (TI has long since removed it from their site, not surprizingly), but it included the pretty girl who is shown in this link,

[Eddie W. Shore]

The TI-84 Plus CE is supposed to be faster than the current TI-84 Plus C PSE. The latter is going to be discontinued.

[Tim Wessman]

(04-28-2015 02:51 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  The TI-84 Plus CE is supposed to be faster than the current TI-84 Plus C PSE. The latter is going to be discontinued.

Not exactly hard to do that... there were some UI things that would take 2-3 seconds to come up. It was quite ridiculous.

[Eddie W. Shore]

(04-28-2015 02:59 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  

(04-28-2015 02:51 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  The TI-84 Plus CE is supposed to be faster than the current TI-84 Plus C PSE. The latter is going to be discontinued.

Not exactly hard to do that... there were some UI things that would take 2-3 seconds to come up. It was quite ridiculous.

In some operations the TI-83+/83+SE was faster than the 84 Plus C PSE - particularly in graphing y=sin(e^x), a 1000 step loop, and inverting a 10 x 10 matrix.

[debrouxl]

There's a huge progression margin for the 83PCE / 84+CE / 84+CE-T: the ""fast"" eZ80 processor is currently hamstrung by slow RAM and slower Flash memory, which require significant waitstate counts...