Hi,
Noted your comment that TI is the preferred calculator for math class.
Well, let me follow up with my own observations.
I was at the University Bookstore that serves the
U of Washington near Seattle. So they've got a case
full of calculators.
Couldn't help but say to the clerk, "I'd like to buy
an HP-32S ii" . She said "sorry, that was discontinued
7 months ago".
I asked "was it popular with the college math students and their teachers?"
She said "no not really". I ask "what is popular for college math" she says "TI-86".
She said most all the students and the professors buy a TI-86, here in March 2003 for their math class.
I saw the HP-48G+, and I saw the HP-49G. I asked about
them, I said 'do the students buy any of those'??
She knew her calculators, and she really implied that they are not popular.
SO, what's the point? Nothing too much, BUT, a person could take a look at the TI-86 just to see if there is anything particularly fine about it.
I surely would not think so in advance. The thing looks incomprehensible and difficult to learn to use.
I have something to say: These graphing calculators are dumb, dumb, dumb, and I'll tell you why. It's a tiny little box with a pixel field of about 60 x 100 pixels. That has less power than a Radio Shack TRS-80 with big 8" floppy disks and a 300 baud modem from about 1982.
A calculator is supposed to do portable computing of numbers. It is not a MATLAB program. If I want extraordinarily complex math processing to do matrices
or post-process an ultrasound image, I wont be using their stupid graphing calculator, and I won't be using it for anything else (except landfill) because they've made the front panel incomprehensibly complicated and therefore useless.
NEVERTHELESS, look to TI-86 (maybe buy one and look it over) if you want to see where the focus point is. I have no doubt
it is inferior to an OLDER HP CLASSIC. However, it may be superior to the current HP offerings. HP has totally lost their corporate marbles. They remind me of Ford/Firestone.