Texas Instruments TI-NSpire Math and Science Handheld Graphing Calculator Review

My school loaned these to us for a year, so I had the opportunity of using the nspire alongside my ti-84+ silver edition. TI had some great ideas with the nspire, such as being able to multitask by keeping multiple things open at once with the tab based window management system and the nice big screen. However, in my experience it still takes me much longer to do actual math on this calculator than on my ti-84 once you get past pretty workbooks and things the teacher can distribute.

Pros:
Awesome data and statistics and Lists and spreadsheet programs. (Though their interface is a little confusing too.)
Cool file management system.
Tab based window management.

Cons:
Keyboard:
The number of buttons in the same amount (actually less) space has basically doubled with the addition of separate keys for each letter and symbol. At first, this seems like it might be a nice thing for typing, but in my experience it 1: causes a lot of mistakes when trying to type in numbers and consequently makes me type them much slower, and 2: actually causes me to type LETTERS slower. That's right, I was really bored in class and timed myself :-). Of course, I am something of a ti-84 touch typist, so that might have influenced that.

Graphs and Geometry:
Graphs and Geometry is by far the worse designed application on the inspire IMHO. Everything that is extremely straightforward and usually requires one or two button presses on the 83/84 takes travel through multiple menus etc... to figure out. For example, to change window settings on the nspire you have to press MENU, then WINDOW, then WINDOW SETTINGS. This may not seem that annoying, but, at least to me, it is. I wish they had a few more hard buttons that could accelerate these kinds of tasks. Another thing that doesn't work very well in Graphs and Geometry is trace. Accessing tracing is three key clicks, it is painfully slow, and it is also, as far as I know, the only way to find things like maximum and minimum values of a function. The y= window has been merged into the graphs and geometry window, which takes up space and obscures the graph, not to mention the confusing interface to switch between it and the graph. The labels for stuff on the graph which are always coming up often appear on top of one another and you have to drag them around to read them. But the most annoying thing about graphs and geometry for me is having to use the incredibly slow and cumbersome cursor/pointing device so much.

Lack of programmability and hackability:
On my Ti-84 I have tons of third party software, as well as some I've written myself. This includes interfaces to run assembly applications which are light years faster than Ti-BASIC, an awesome program called Omnicalc which adds a lot of features and another program called Symbolic which actually adds some symbolic math capability such as crude symbolic derivation and simplification of expressions to the calculator (like the ti-89.) I believe that the nspire, however, has DRM built in to prevent assembly programs from running and has practically no third party ti-BASIC software. I have not been able to run anything on my inspire- I typed in a prime number calculation program and couldn't make it run even after looking through the terrible documentation.

Conclusion:
Spare yourself a lot of hassle and get a ti-84. (Or I guess you could get an inspire and use the ti-84 keyboard, which I don't have.) You won't be sorry. Here's hoping for an nspire 2 with function keys just like the ti-89 and 84, a usable keyboard, and a more open and malleable software design.

Buy it here now!