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Comment by don-code | Hacker News Reader

I have a hard time calling these "upgrades". I had a TI-83 (not Plus) in high school - the Plus gave us ROM, the TI-84 gave us USB, and the TI-84 CE gave us a color screen, which are all creature comforts at best. It's on par with what we'd think of "upgrades" circa Apple II -> Apple IIe.

I _would_ call moving from a TI-83 to the TI nSpire CAS an upgrade - there's a whole host of things that the nSpire can do which the TI-83 can't, like symbolic calculations and matrix math with complex values. I'd also bet it can emulate a TI-84 faster than a native TI-84.

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I have a nSpire CAS. While those features are really, really good, it does have a significant flaw compared to older graphic calculators (including the TI-89, which is probably more of a predecessor to the nSpire CAS than the 84 is as the 89 also has CAS): actual boot up time.

The 84 and 89 are instant on while the nSpire has significant boot time. I guess you are suppose to leave it on but let it “sleep” like a modern smartphone, but the battery life is bad even when the screen is off. I’m not sure how the 84 CE compares, if it’s “just” and 84 with color or it’s something much more modern locked to running an 84 emulator.

The boot-up time is really a killer. I also just can not get used to the input/keyboard of the nSpire.

My actual workflow is to use DM42/HP-35s for anything I can do with those, and if it's more complicated, I'd rather launch Octave or MATLAB. I just can't make my nSpire work for me.

> I _would_ call moving from a TI-83 to the TI nSpire CAS an upgrade

Having used all of TI-83, TI-84, and TI nSpire, I can say that unless you need and are allowed to use the CAS portion of the nSpire, it is a downgrade in almost every way.

In calculus, I could be done with a calculation on the TI-83 before my classmates in on the nSpire even got to the relevant screen - the UI makes molasses look fast. It may have more features, but at least at high school levels, you just straight up don't need them.

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