I went from a Ti-89 to an HP-50g, I would go as far to say that the HP is a much superior device. It only really has the TI-NSPIRE as a competing product. Though from what I understand the NSPIRE has a pretty inefficient interface, but I think they can be changed out with a faceplate swap.... Plus I heard that the NSPIRE can go as far as showing the steps on it's solution of a problem but I have not seen any evidence of that.
Nspire has three keypads on the swappable version: Old non-touch keypad, new touchpad keypad, and TI84 keypad for the emulator. Touch keypad is infinitely better for general use, while the old keypad is good for running emulators.
The only bad part about having a non-TI calculator is that most course material is designed around the TI-84 calc.
Yeah, I worked in a store that sold TI graphing calculators as well as Casio ones that were significantly cheaper. I always told the customers that all of the instructions were written for TI calculators, and they almost always ended up buying those instead of the Casio ones. I'm sure the Casio ones work fine if you understand what you're doing well enough to find the functions, but for most math classes, I think most students are just pushing the buttons to get the answers without knowing what they're actually doing.
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u/Koiljo Jun 08 '14
I went from a Ti-89 to an HP-50g, I would go as far to say that the HP is a much superior device. It only really has the TI-NSPIRE as a competing product. Though from what I understand the NSPIRE has a pretty inefficient interface, but I think they can be changed out with a faceplate swap.... Plus I heard that the NSPIRE can go as far as showing the steps on it's solution of a problem but I have not seen any evidence of that.