TICALCS.net

pros and cons? which would be better suited for an electrical engineer?

I'm leaniing towards the Nspire CAS.....but i'm looking for some opinions

hmm any arguments made in the past about the nspire will now have to be re-evaluated because it seems a new update is on the website. The only thing that bothers me and therefore keeps me from upgrading is the fact that no changes list is present. spooky lol...Someone wanna take the plunge and report back?

I don't have a TI-Nspire, but in terms of what it can actually compute and do with mathematics and engineering, I'm guessing there isn't much of a difference.

The TI-Nspire doesn't really have good support for programming, though, while the TI-89 Titanium has built-in support for assembly and on-calculator "TI-BASIC" programming, so there are many, many programs available for the TI-89 Titanium to extend its abilities (ticalc.org has a large archive of programs).

That's what I've been able to gather thus far. Is the lack of support for programming a hardware thing or a software thing? I've also read the TI hasnt really finished the OS for this calc yet so there might be an update down the line to unlock the full potential like the 89 has?

I'm moving up from a TI-83 from 99', which I never used any of the programming abilities or anything on it. I only used a 89Ti once because I needed to do some things with complex matrices and my 83 doesnt support that. I figured its about time to get a new calculator, locally the 89Ti is around $160, online I can get the Nspire CAS for $138.

This being a new line for TI, I would expect them to be "Better" than the present stuff or at least down the line (after some OS updates) be better than the 89...

In reality, I'm not too sure how much of the programming nature of the device I would actually use. Probably next to none. However I do like having the option.

..well like i just said the update is out...

Yes, well hopefully TI will release more updates in the future so the Nspire becomes more comparable to the TI-89 Titanium, but then again they might choose to not release any significant updates.

do you know what was in the recent update?

I believe that the additions include polar graphing, more "trace" settings, more support for programming (editing), some more statistics options.

The programming is the most significant update.

But remember that the N-Spire's capabilities are questionable at best at this present time. The 89 Titanium is reliable and endowed with plenty of features as it is now, perfectly suitable for an engineer. However, should the N-Spire decide to live up to what it projects itself to be (yes, even after the recent updates) and you enjoy both a computer and on-calc CAS, then that would be the way to go.

I had a TI-89 Titanium and I replaced it with nspire CAS which I thought was a TI-89 replacement.
Solving complicated engineering equations cannot be done without some pain on the CAS as it does not have a numerical solver. Programming lacks any form of user input command which prevents creating user prompted input to solve equations easily.

I would suggest staying with the TI-89T or an HP50G both of which are far superior to the Npsire series calculators at this time.

Just my 2 cents.