Casio does a wonderful job, and it's a shame they aren't more standard in American schooling. Texas Instruments costs more of the same jobs, and is mandatory for certain systems or tests. You need to pay like $40 for a calculator that hasn't changed much if at all from the 1990's.

Meanwhile I have a Casio fx-115ES Plus and it does everything that one did, plus some nice quality of life features, for less money.

[–] burgersc12@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 year ago

$40??!! My ti that was required was like over $200!!

[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

TI did the same thing Quark and Adobe did later on – got dominance in their markets, killed off their competition, and then sat back and rested on their laurels thinking they were untouchable

EDIT: although in part, we should thank TI for one thing – if they hadn’t monopolized the calculator market, Commodore would’ve gone into calculators instead of computers

[–] uphillbothways@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A

It was a huge failure, but they tried.

[–] somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huge failure my ass. Come at me on munch man, Alpiner, or Tombstone City. Or coding vaguely racist things like Mr. Bojangles, one of the first codes in the early books.

[–] uphillbothways@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Had one at home and used the hell out of it, don't get me wrong. Was my first computer. Played the Zork series on that thing. But, it had issues and wasn't a financial success.

[–] somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It had fewer issues than almost anything I've owned since. I bet it would still work if I got the right adaptors. Wasn't a huge financial success though. They seemed content with early coding and games, and didn't move into word processing etc.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

If you're lucky, you can find these TI calculators in thrift shops or other similar places. I've been lucky since I got both of my last 2 graphing calculators at a yard sale and thrift shop respectively, for maybe around $40-$50 for both.

[–] zourn@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The TI equivalent to the Casio fx-115ES Plus is the TI-36X Pro, and they both cost $20 at Walmart.