Need advice from Engineers who are also TI users

[Manolo Sobrino]

I subscribe to the TI-86 recommendation. It's a fine professional calculator with a more readable screen than the 89, it's sturdy and packages a lot of functionality that you can figure out easily with the occasional peep at the user guide. My favourite TI calc by far. I keep spares although my first one, which I bought used years ago, works and looks great.

Also recommended this one to a young engineer instead of the 50G. Yes I did that and I don't regret it, neither does she: she could focus on her degree instead of getting to know that beast, which was the general idea really.

I'm surprised at the "poor LCD connection quality" comment. Not my experience at all, that might be a problem with the 82 and 85 (bluish LCDs and heat seal connectors that are getting too old). There's a lot of garbage on ebay, but also lots of them in very good shape there and elsewhere. I've seen a few times vendors selling them as broken, "black screen", because they just pop batteries in and don't lower the contrast, it's funny.