50g

you raise a great point faith. one has only to look at the monstrosity that is the new ti nspire keyboard to see the main problem--the input method. you can buy a $99 palm pilot that has stylus input, why do our calculators not have that simple method of user input which would solve 85% of the ugly keyboard and alpha-mode problems that make me wince in advance each time i reach for a cas calculator knowing i'm going to have to input text.

now that was a great tip! and they even have a mac version.

i've downloaded the trial and i'll install it tomorrow when i get back home to my mac.

/guy

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 7:27 PM, George <gfenisey@...> wrote:

Looks interesting. There is a Classpad 330 according to their web-site.

Try the free download trial of NSpire computer software instead of a
hand held device. Has the best of everything. Great screen, mouse
control, storage capacity. This way you can try a NSpire for 30 days
free. Then buy a device if you like it.

George

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 7:43 PM, Guy Teague <gt@...> wrote:

now that was a great tip! and they even have a mac version.

i've downloaded the trial and i'll install it tomorrow when i get back home to my mac.

/guy

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 7:27 PM, George <gfenisey@...> wrote:

Looks interesting. There is a Classpad 330 according to their web-site.

Try the free download trial of NSpire computer software instead of a
hand held device. Has the best of everything. Great screen, mouse
control, storage capacity. This way you can try a NSpire for 30 days
free. Then buy a device if you like it.

George

yes, i definitely ordered the cas version. 

so someone who owns this calc please take pity on me and tell me how to isolate a symbolic variable. for the simplest of examples, i need to solve for, or isolate 'c' onto one side of this equation.

a+b/c=d

or a+b/c=0

or a+b/c

i've tried all three of these forms and used 'factor', 'solve', and 'expand' with no luck. i've tried some of the forms that have worked on other calculators such as:

a+b/c,c
a+b/c;c
a+b/c:c
a+b/c c

or

a+b/c <enter>
c <enter>

and i've at least skimmed through the users guides and the ref guides for both the calc and for the cas mac software and have not yet found an example nor the forms or paramters for these functions.

thanks,

/guy

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Guy Teague <gt@...> wrote:

rec'd calc (cas vers) this afternoon and immediately ran into problems with the computer software. i had installed the mac cas software already and i figured that it would contain the ability to link to the calculator when i got it. wrong. you have to specifically and separately install ti-link software to do that. how is that even logical that their computer software which emulates the calculator won't even link to the calculator? i can't fathom that choice.

at any rate, i installed the ti-link application and although it immediately found the calculator, it failed everything i tried to do: firmware update and backup. it was obviously a permissions error since it kept telling me it couldn't write to the folder it supposedly created to hold its documents: ~/Documents/TI-Nspire/.

of course i went to the top level of that folder and gave it 'r/w = all' permissions and extended those attributes to all enclosed folders. but this still did not fix the problem. then i had an epiphany--perhaps the cas software had created the folder and the link software couldn't use it, improbable as that sounds since ti wrote both of them, so i uninstalled the cas software, deleted the ti-nspire folder, restarted (for luck more than anything else), then installed the link software first. this time it created a different structure inside that folder and the firmware update and the backup both worked. then i re-installed the cas software and it just used the folder the link software had created without a whimper.

g3333sh!! how incompetent can ti mac programmers be in one of their applications can't even use a folder that another of their applications created? and why can't they build a link module into their $120 cas program and integrate the calculator into the software rather than forcing the user to run two different programs?

so i still haven't gotten around to more than the barest touch of the actual calculator. i did find it will not calculate 355/113 unless i hit 'cntl + enter' although it will calculate 2+3 with the enter key. at first i thought of the switch in the hp that will display symbolic or real results, but so far i haven't found something similar in the ti yet, but, as i said, i haven't yet read a single page of documentation.

btw, the display, though it has pretty characters, is not good. it doesn't have any crispness or contrast adjustment that will make it look good. i admit i haven't tried alternate fonts. the keyboard, although it has the 'wobbly keys' syndrome common to   most ti calcs, is surprisingly easier to use than it looks in the pictures. in fact the calc looks much better in person than in the pictures. it is not as large as i feared and feels solid in construction--it nearly feels industrial rather than consumer. it has a sliding cover which stores underneath and it uses those damm 'aaa' batteries which so many manufacturers seem to have entered into a devli/radio shack conspiracy to use since there's no better way to sell a bunch of batteries than to keep consumers from using 'aa's! oh, and one smart design decision was to use a bog standard usb cable to connect to the computer.

more later ...

/guy

i finally figured it out from an error message.

i put in 'solve(a+b/c),c' and it told me that 'a+b/c' wasn't an equation. so i entered:

'solve(a+b/c=0,c)' and bob's your uncle!! i found that:

'solve(a+b/c=d,c)' also works.

so, only two days to figure out that simple item. and i did that without being able to figure out how to edit an entry, so i had to reenter the whole equation each time. and i still haven't figured out how to drag and drop although the cursor turns to a hand.

y'know, why is all this crap so difficult? i'm getting too old to devote a year of my life to learning a non-intuitive calculator.

i did figure out how to do a temperature conversion and it's just as convoluted as the hp50 way--you have to go back and forth into a menu about 4 times unless you want to figure out how to type in the 'degree' symbol i guess. and so far there's no sight of the hundred+ flags of the hp50 nor an equation library. there are 'activities' to download, but i find very few of them useful without opening both their accompanying word and pdf files anyway, so why even bother with the calculator? just download the pdfs.

the templates section looks interesting and i will gradually sneak up on those as i go along. but they are represented as tiny icons, not text--and no little text balloon pops up to tell you what the templates are for.

/guy

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Guy Teague <gt@...> wrote:

yeah, that's exactly what i'm looking for.

that's the hp way. but i can't find a similar structure on the nspire cas.

/guy

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 8:37 PM, tedwingate <tedwingate@...> wrote:

'a+b/c=d'
'c'
ISOL

c=-b/(a-d) will be returned on the stack

Is that the type of thing you're looking for?

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and now that i've blasted this thing so bad, i find the programming exceptionally easy to use. i was able to write a program that simulated a die toss in 3 lines and less than 3 minutes. i've starred my input, the other lines were pre-filled in:

Define dice()=
Prgm
*Local d
*randInt(1,6) -> d
*Disp d
EndPrgm

the program words were inserted from the catalog, all i supplied was the variable name and the parameters. and running it is as simple as hitting the 'var' key and selecting from a list. the program editor has a nice split-screen mode.

if you guys are getting tired of my little mini-rants and reviews of this calc (seeing as how we are, after all, on an hp50 list) just let me know. but i think many or perhaps most of us have multiple calculators and are interested in all the brands and models.

for those interested i found the following site has some extremely helpful videos of many ti-nspire procedures and their coin toss programming example was extremely easy for me to modify for this dice toss program:

http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/ti_nspire/

/guy

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 1:04 AM, Guy Teague <gt@...> wrote:

i finally figured it out from an error message.

i put in 'solve(a+b/c),c' and it told me that 'a+b/c' wasn't an equation. so i entered:

'solve(a+b/c=0,c)' and bob's your uncle!! i found that:

'solve(a+b/c=d,c)' also works.

so, only two days to figure out that simple item. and i did that without being able to figure out how to edit an entry, so i had to reenter the whole equation each time. and i still haven't figured out how to drag and drop although the cursor turns to a hand.

y'know, why is all this crap so difficult? i'm getting too old to devote a year of my life to learning a non-intuitive calculator.

i did figure out how to do a temperature conversion and it's just as convoluted as the hp50 way--you have to go back and forth into a menu about 4 times unless you want to figure out how to type in the 'degree' symbol i guess. and so far there's no sight of the hundred+ flags of the hp50 nor an equation library. there are 'activities' to download, but i find very few of them useful without opening both their accompanying word and pdf files anyway, so why even bother with the calculator? just download the pdfs.

the templates section looks interesting and i will gradually sneak up on those as i go along. but they are represented as tiny icons, not text--and no little text balloon pops up to tell you what the templates are for.

/guy

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Guy Teague <gt@...> wrote:

yeah, that's exactly what i'm looking for.

that's the hp way. but i can't find a similar structure on the nspire cas.

/guy

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 8:37 PM, tedwingate <tedwingate@...> wrote:

'a+b/c=d'
'c'
ISOL

c=-b/(a-d) will be returned on the stack

Is that the type of thing you're looking for?

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george, on that website i quote that has the movie tutorials, one of the movies marked 'new' and 'cas' says that the non-cas has solve, but that it can't solve for multiple 0s or something like that.

the screen is just ok. in good light. i would say it's a tiny fraction better than the ti89 and the main reason i don't use the 89 much is because the screen is pretty bad. i have bad eyes, but ... the fonts are better on the nspire and it is more readable, but trying to increase the contrast only darkens the background.

the notes application has just a couple of templates, but they are useful and easy to use, as is the notes application itself. there are about 12-18 math templates, but i haven't tried them much yet, mainly because in all but one of the views i can't tell what the tiny icons represent. i found one view once which had them titled, but i've forgotten where i found it.

i must say i'm beginning to warm up to it somewhat after the initial bad impression. the keyboard with those little nubs sticking up for alpha keys works and i rarely hit double characters. the menu system is convoluted and for a beginner i keep going into the wrong menu system--there are essentially three available most of the time, a couple fixed and one contextual. but i'm already finding myself memorizing sequences such as 'ctl + menu + 5 + 5' or something like that.

it badly needs engineering formulas like the hp48/50 and easier conversions. the nice part is that the programming seems so easy hopefully someone will write stuff like that for it. it only has 20mb of memory, but most everything can be dumped off via the ti-link app. i've got all the available 'activities' (tutorial-like modules) installed and the book 'flatland' and i'm using less than 1/3rd the memory.

as i mentioned earlier, i still can't figure out why the cas computer app won't link to the handheld, but you can develop on either the mac or windows cas app and then move your file to the link program and then move it to the calculator.

/guy

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 10:33 PM, George <gfenisey@...> wrote:

Hi Guy,

Sorry for getting you started.

BUT, I am listening to every word that you and the others are saying.

I didn't get the NSpire CAS version. What is your thought on the
readability of the screen compared to everything else?

My NSpire without CAS says politely the Solve function is not supported
and I need to have a CAS version of course.  TI 92 Plus did the Solve
using exactly same syntax you used on the NSpire. The TI 92 screen is
very poor compared to HP calculators in general.

You haven't mentioned the templates yet.

Listening,

George

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