Talk:768: 1996

The only problem with the N-Spire series is that you have to boot it up. Another problem (ok, the nspires are riddled with problems) is that they are still terribly underpowered compared to the modern mobile device. The last is that they are still objects of mass blunt-force trauma, meaning they are still unwieldy bricks, you now have to wait for 2 minutes while your calculator boots up (!!), it's still a low resolution screen, and the processor is still clocked somewhere under 500 MHz.

Now, if T.I. made an android app that offered the entirety of their graphing and CAS functionality they could easily charge $70 and everyone I know (I go to an engineering university) would buy it with no regrets.

--lcarsos_a (talk) 23:04, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

They'll never do that - profs (not to mention high school teachers) would freak out! If that's not yet the only reason dedicated-hardware graphing calculators still exist, it soon will be. 24.218.167.129 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Why? Why they would freak out? 173.245.48.107 22:18, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I can think of a couple reasons: I can't imagine many teachers or professors allowing students to use their smartphones in an exam scenario. (Honest sir, I'm only using my calculator app!). A large proportion of profs I've dealt with tend to be creatures of habit, with a certain resistance to change. Rightly or wrongly they know the existing calculators work, so why change. --Pudder (talk) 09:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Wait. Are you telling me I can get a college degree for the price of a calculator case and someone to fit a phone in it?

I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

TI has, in fact, already made a TI-Nspire iPad app (but there's nothing official for Android). --Qwach (talk) 19:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

If we're talking about apps, then Maxima for Android is all you need. 108.162.212.196 23:45, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

This explanation misses an important point of the comic's punchline: back in the mid-'90s, you would spend lots of cash for something that, by today's standards, is underpowered. While the observation about the state of changing technology between then and now is valid, the punchline to the comic is that in the case of TI calculators, not only has the *technology* not moved forward, but the *price* hasn't changed either! Nobody would nowadays pay 3000 dollars for the 100MHz Pentium machine mentioned in the comic, but people still spend 100 dollars on a 10MHz calculator. Madness. This is why the characters stumble over the "Times sure have changed" sentiment because, in the TI case, nothing has changed at all. 141.101.81.216 09:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

My TI-84 Plus is 95 x 63 pixels, rather than 96 x 64. 108.162.246.209 02:21, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Did you look under the battery holder? Perhaps a pixel broke loose and slipped under there. 199.27.133.123 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The operating system hides the last row and column of pixels from you, particularly on the graph screen, giving the appearance that it's 95x63, but it really is 96x64. Also, the original version of this comic had the dimensions at 96x62, but Randall later fixed it to the correct 96x64. 108.162.237.216 20:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

It is worth noting that it takes exactly 768 bytes to store an image of the screen, and there are several 768 byte buffers used by the OS for saving the screen. I don't know the comic number is on purpose, but it's certainly quite appropriate. --73.176.149.27 03:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)