Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 202
 Very good quality machine with good improvements over the TI-89 June 12, 2009
Ann E. Revelle (Los Alamos, New Mexico)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have owned top of the line graphing and scientific calculators from TI, HP, Casio, Sharp, etc. Back when I was a student, TI's were very cheaply made and often broke quite easily. This machine, the TI-89, Titanium, is definitely not cheaply made and is definitely put together very well. It is also a good improvement over its predecessor, the TI-89 with more memory and with an improved keyboard and improved keyboard "feel" and a much better feature set, etc. The pros and cons as I see it are:
PROS:
1) It has all the standard and CAS (Computer Algebra SYstem) features that we have come to expect on such a machine, plus many nice very detailed and topic as well as course specific APPS that are already preloaded or can be added in electronically and quite simply from the TI website. The interface with a computer is fast and easy to set up.
2) It has a very nice calendar and note storage system for keeping track of coursework and daily workload assignments.
3) It is quite fast with a nice graphical interface and resultant plotting system. The resultant plots are high quality and with the many added features available for enhancement are very intuitive for the learning process.
4) The icon system for choosing where you want to be on the machine can also be converted to a much easier and quicker to navigate text-list system.
5) It has a nice and quite modern, curved body design that sits very nicely both on a desk or a table as well as in your hand.
6) It has a large amount of onboard main memory, plus additional Flash memory for tackling quite memory intensive problems.
CONS:
1) There is no SD card slot as on the HP50g.
2) Integrals are completed by a table look-up process and not by direct manipulation so very little insight can be found by students as to why the result appears the way it does. On the HP50g, in step by step mode, much insight can be gained by the manner in which the integrals are performed for example.
3) The algebraic operating system is the only choice available on this machine which usually requires many more keystrokes to do a complicated problem.
4) The available programming languages are quite limited on this machine as compared again to the HP50g.
5) Some functions that you would readily expect to be available with a single key press require instead at least two key presses, but usually with only a single shift key press first.
6) The color coding choices are not nearly as distinctive and easy to quickly recognize as on the HP50g.
7) As with the HP50g, it require multiple batteries plus a backup coin cell battery to save everything briefly when changing the main batteries.
8) TI should also impliment a fine backlight system for viewing the screen at low light levels, as recently included on the Casio FX-9860g Slim version for example.
 Great calculator June 12, 2009
D. Moyer (Boyertown, Pa)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Just what I was looking for. I had to borrow a freinds all last year, now I have one of my own at a great price too.
 Bad Key Input Design (sin, cos, tan) June 11, 2009
D.F. (NY, NY)
1 out of 9 found this review helpful
Very bad keyboard design, because is not like the ti-83, where you can press once to calculate sine, cosine, or tangent. On this calculator, they replace those three MAIN buttons for y,z,t. As a result if someone wants to calculate or graph sin (x), he must press the key "2nd" "Y", ridiculous pain in the neck.
But graphing, taking the derivatives, and integrating is way much faster than the TI Voyage 200. Also it has better documentation, the rest is the same operating system.
awesome calculator June 2, 2009
M. Norton (Bloomington, IL)
The TI-89 Titanium is a great calculator. I had a TI-83 plus silver edition in high school and upgraded to the TI-89 Titanium when I went off to college. I was a physics major and a math minor, so the calculator got a good workout. Five years later, I am now in graduate school still using my TI-89 Titanium. The only problem I've had with it is the battery on mine just broke. Its built in calculus tools and differential equation solver has definitely been a big help. The built in units and scientific constants have also been a huge help in doing unit analysis. I highly recommend this calculator, and I would definitely go out and buy another one if anything happened to mine.
Still the best, even with its shortcomings... May 15, 2009
carabidus (CT USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While I actually agree with several points in the "one star" reviews of this calculator, they fail to provide an alternate calculator that has the universal acceptance and support enjoyed by the TI-89. Yes, the processor and memory could be faster... Yes, the display really should be on par with a Blackberry... Yes, the equation entry area could be larger... Is it sad that most hand held devices handily beat the TI-89 in terms of processing power, its display and ease of use? Definitely. Nonetheless, the TI-89 will continue to hold the "gold standard" position until we see a calculator on par with modern portable device technology. Even TI's latest creation, the Nspire, is a sorry excuse for an upgrade. That's why I give the TI-89 Titanium 5 stars as there does not yet exist a worthy competitor to it, even within the TI company itself.
Showing reviews 26-30 of 202
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