Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Other Calculators => Topic started by: JosJuice on April 05, 2011, 02:30:01 pm

Title: a video about the cx or something
Post by: JosJuice on April 05, 2011, 02:30:01 pm
http://nttv.unt.edu/content/ti-nspire (http://nttv.unt.edu/content/ti-nspire)

Hmm, I wonder why they start an Nspire video with downloading the 83+ SDK... They clearly have no idea of what they're talking about. And why are the students browsing Facebook?
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 05, 2011, 02:32:17 pm
Whats the big deal with the CX for education anyway? Math and science don't need a color screen or the ability to load photos. The gameboy emulator, on the other hand....
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: Munchor on April 05, 2011, 02:33:26 pm
http://nttv.unt.edu/content/ti-nspire (http://nttv.unt.edu/content/ti-nspire)

Hmm, I wonder why they start an Nspire video with downloading the 83+ SDK... They clearly have no idea of what they're talking about. And why are the students browsing Facebook?

The facebook is them watching videos of TI, but the 83+ SDK, no idea :P

But the video is not OK, did you hear them saying "we want them to engage in maths", then give us programming capabilities to code games!
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 05, 2011, 02:40:38 pm
Whats the big deal with the CX for education anyway? Math and science don't need a color screen or the ability to load photos. The gameboy emulator, on the other hand....
I think it's to make these calcs more attracting to the new generation of students that are used to every other screen having colors. Personally I find my PRIZM screen much easier to read than my Casio FX-9860G/TI-83+ screen.

However, what I like in this video is how the CX screen doesn't seem to blur during movement or pixel changes, so this is good.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 05, 2011, 03:17:32 pm
I just don't like the direction TI is taking with what started out as a tool. Whats next, music playback and facebook integration? Maybe the CX2 will use twitter and Wolfram Alpha? (And lack a trig key and a Pi key)

TI is too much like Nintendo, they make overpriced and locked down products from crappy, outdated components.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 05, 2011, 03:43:14 pm
Nice big troll above here, mikehill2003...

Nintendo doesn't sell overpriced products. When the DS came out it was about $200 cheaper than the PSP here and the PSP remained above $200 for years until the PSPGo came out. Their Wii costed $279.99 on launch, while the 360 and PS3 costed about $700. Yes, Nintendo consoles are less powerful, but it's totally untrue that their stuff is overpriced. I think that status would go more for other console makers, especially Sony. TI, on the other hand, sells overpriced hardware.

Also, if you haven't noticed, the rest of the community wants more powerful hardware. Take a look at the interest for the Casio Prizm color calc: TI programmers bought one, something that would never have occured with their previous products, because to everyone, TI was better than Casio. I seriously don't understand why you are so much against a calc with a color screen when you use one mostly for programming and gaming, something where colors are more than welcome. That said, I agree that their products are locked down so much.

You should stop trying to start fights.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: willrandship on April 05, 2011, 06:04:08 pm
I have to disagree DJ, the PSP has more expensive hardware in it, like a much more powerful processor, a better screen, more inputs, etc., so it actually costs more for a reason. Both are overpriced, though, it's the nature of consumer electronics. People will sell it for as much as they can to make a profit. The calcs are far worse than the game systems though.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 05, 2011, 07:35:59 pm
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Nice big troll above here, mikehill2003...

Nintendo doesn't sell overpriced products. When the DS came out it was about $200 cheaper than the PSP here and the PSP remained above $200 for years until the PSPGo came out. Their Wii costed $279.99 on launch, while the 360 and PS3 costed about $700. Yes, Nintendo consoles are less powerful, but it's totally untrue that their stuff is overpriced. I think that status would go more for other console makers, especially Sony. TI, on the other hand, sells overpriced hardware.

I regret to say that I strongly disagree with the above. I was not trolling/starting a fight. As for Nintento I think that this spreadsheet I made a few month ago explains their position here in the US quite well. For the components included in their products compared to competing products, their stuff is overpriced.

(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/2858/screenshotns.png)

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Also, if you haven't noticed, the rest of the community wants more powerful hardware. Take a look at the interest for the Casio Prizm color calc: TI programmers bought one, something that would never have occured with their previous products, because to everyone, TI was better than Casio. I seriously don't understand why you are so much against a calc with a color screen when you use one mostly for programming and gaming, something where colors are more than welcome. That said, I agree that their products are locked down so much.

I want more powerful hardware as much as everyone else here. I'm definitely not against a color screen (or calculator games), only the fact that now the screen is a lot smaller. Also, I feel they talk far too much about the new color screen. Wouldn't everyone here rather have a full sized color screen and a modern processor? And as far as bashing TI for crappy components, if they were in the above image, the price/performance ratio would be by far the worst of all.

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You should stop trying to start fights.
It was never my intent to start a fight.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: Goplat on April 05, 2011, 08:45:09 pm
I don't think that's a sensible comparison to make. The only time price/computing power ratio is a good metric to use when deciding what to buy is if you're putting together a supercomputing cluster. For game systems, the value you get is not linear with CPU power or memory - if you buy ten XBoxes, you have ten times the computing power, but can you really have ten times the fun with them?
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 05, 2011, 09:11:23 pm
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I don't think that's a sensible comparison to make.

As a way to say "Never buy a console, and if you do, make sure it's not a Wii" this comparison is absolutely worthless. The reason I put it here is simply to show that for the price of their console, Nintendo does not use reasonable hardware, which is the same complaint I have with TI.

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The only time price/computing power ratio is a good metric to use when deciding what to buy is if you're putting together a supercomputing cluster.

That's most of the reason I started this spreadsheet. Also, as far as performance goes, neither floating point operations per second nor cycles per second are a great way to compare different processors and architectures.

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For game systems, the value you get is not linear with CPU power or memory
No, but the visual quality of many games is. Crysis 2 would be an excellent example of this, as would Black Ops. For some people, that's all that matters.

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- if you buy ten XBoxes, you have ten times the computing power, but can you really have ten times the fun with them?
Of course not. This list is here only to show that Nintendo uses crappy hardware. Many people don't care about playing Crysis, they'd rather play Bejeweled. For them, the Wii might be the best console, even though in terms of value for hardware, it is lame. I don't look down on people who only play certain games, I just wish Nintendo would use modern hardware instead of being cheap.

Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 05, 2011, 10:37:15 pm
I think the main issue is offer/demand. Nintendo has an history of selling their consoles cheaper on launch. I remember the N64 for example. However, since they become very popular their price won't drop as fast. I remember the 360 was like $300 cheaper 3 years after launch, and today the Wii only dropped by about $60 over here (compared to the launch price).

Maybe Nintendo has cheaper hardware for the price ratio, but it doesn't mean their consoles are bad. They're just for a different group of people.

However, something seems wrong with your image above: Where I live the 360 costed about $700 on launch, not $300. Was it really this cheap in USA when it came out? O.O

I think TI is much more worse than Nintendo on the hardware/ratio point, and on the TI-Nspire, less freedom.

Also personally as much as I wish the CX screen was a lot larger, I would rather have it so it's small enough to allow the calc to fit in a pocket. I feel the TI-Nspire is too huge, compared to the Prizm. Also, if the resolution was larger I would surely hope the text is still readable. If they decided to use a 720x480 LCD, but the entire text was 8 px fonts, it would hurt our eyes. I already find the text small enough on the Nspire Clickpad and the TI-89T.

Anyway I guess everyone got their opinions, but in your earlier comment, mikehill2003, it sounded like you were totally against a color screen and the way the rest was worded it seemed like you were against calc dev and thought they were reserved only for math. We need to be careful about how we word stuff and also some people are more sensitive so if they arrive with a CX or a Prizm and you go tell them this calc is worthless because of the hardware they might think you are telling them they're worthless.

And one thing to remember is that Omnimaga doesn't welcome fanboyism towards consoles, OSes, browsers, languages, etc, so we have to be careful to make sure what we say doesn't sound like it comes from a fanboy.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: willrandship on April 05, 2011, 10:59:09 pm
Spoiler For Begin Rant about consoles:
Don't talk about freedom with consoles. There is no such thing on game consoles. There still isn't a viable software coding solution for the N64 that doesn't have extra attachments (ie flash carts) that cost upwards of $50, not counting emulators. The only reason it's viable on the Wii and the PS3 is because there are ways to hack it, similar to ndless, and memory to alter. Same goes for the PSP. The xbox original also had a fairly difficult softmod, either involving save hacking or HD swapping while the system was running.

Virtually any console you've ever seen (besides the PS3, but that's changed too, with the removal of otherOS, but the Dreamcast also had it) was designed to be locked down from the beginning, from a programming standpoint. This includes the NES, the Sega CD, or any other cartridge-based game, the PS2, the Xbox, The wii, The Gamecube, and Also handhelds.

The vast majority of Video game consoles need something exactly like ndless to get homebrew, at least initially. (By identical, I mean they work on the same concept of finding and exploiting glitches)


Note the nonfanboyism, since I accused all of them equally, since they are equally guilty.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 05, 2011, 11:09:22 pm
Didn't Sony try to block every possible PS3 hacks tho? I remember the PSP was easy to hack and most games would get pirated. Also on the NES didn't they allow third-party publishers too? I remember those Tengen cartridges that looked different than the others.

Anyway, for the console stuff we should probably start a new topic in technology/gaming since this is getting a bit off-topic.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 05, 2011, 11:25:53 pm
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I think the main issue is offer/demand. Nintendo has an history of selling their consoles cheaper on launch. I remember the N64 for example. However, since they become very popular their price won't drop as fast. I remember the 360 was like $300 cheaper 3 years after launch, and today the Wii only dropped by about $60 over here (compared to the launch price).
Yes, the price of the 360 has changed a lot relative to the prices of other consoles.

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Maybe Nintendo has cheaper hardware for the price ratio, but it doesn't mean their consoles are bad. They're just for a different group of people.
Which is pretty much what I said in my previous post. Only problem is that's not a very good excuse to use relatively crappy components to make more money.

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However, something seems wrong with your image above: Where I live the 360 costed about $700 on launch, not $300. Was it really this cheap in USA when it came out? O.O
Only if you could find one.

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I think TI is much more worse than Nintendo on the hardware/ratio point, and on the TI-Nspire, less freedom.
Yes, TI has worse price/value ratios than Nintendo, but the Wii and DS are far more locked down then the Nspire. There is no Wii-BASIC or anything like it.

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Also personally as much as I wish the CX screen was a lot larger, I would rather have it so it's small enough to allow the calc to fit in a pocket. I feel the TI-Nspire is too huge, compared to the Prizm.
This is simply a matter of personal preference, there isn't anything to discuss here.

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Also, if the resolution was larger I would surely hope the text is still readable. If they decided to use a 720x480 LCD, but the entire text was 8 px fonts, it would hurt our eyes. I already find the text small enough on the Nspire Clickpad and the TI-89T.
Fortunately, this would not be an issue. The iPhone 4's display has a very high pixel density, and yet it is one of the clearest and easiest to read displays in use. The problem you're referring to is merely a font size issue. I believe that is somewhat adjustable on the Nspire.

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Anyway I guess everyone got their opinions, but in your earlier comment, mikehill2003, it sounded like you were totally against a color screen and the way the rest was worded it seemed like you were against calc dev and thought they were reserved only for math.
No, I think a color screen is a great thing, but TI uses it as a shield against the Nspire's other problems (such as the weak CPU). As in "Look, our new TI-Nspire CX has a shiny color screen!" "I see. Does it use a modern 800Mhz CPU yet?" "Look, the ability to draw graphs onto images will revolutionize teaching!"

I'm not against calc game dev at all. I personally don't have enough free time right now to do it, but I fully appreciate the effort that goes into calc games. Features that make a calculator great for game development, like a great screen, plenty of memory, and good programming support also make it great for serious things like mathematics.

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We need to be careful about how we word stuff and also some people are more sensitive so if they arrive with a CX or a Prizm and you go tell them this calc is worthless because of the hardware they might think you are telling them they're worthless.
I agree, but don't consider any decent calculator worthless, much less its owner.

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And one thing to remember is that Omnimaga doesn't welcome fanboyism towards consoles, OSes, browsers, languages, etc, so we have to be careful to make sure what we say doesn't sound like it comes from a fanboy.
Don't worry, I'm not really a fanboy of any kind. I care far more about an individual product's worth on its own then the company or philosophy that led to its development. In other words, I'd gladly sell my iPod if someone made a faster and cheaper Android alternate.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: calc84maniac on April 05, 2011, 11:29:10 pm
If I understand it correctly, Nintendo needed to make some money off of hardware after the relative failure of the GameCube (which was the most powerful of its console generation). They had no idea the Wii would be so popular, anyway.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 05, 2011, 11:36:16 pm
I think Nintendo took the advantage that most of their games were more oriented for kid-like games that didN't require good graphics as much and spent most of their time trying to find an innovative way to entertain people, and the hardware suffered. Once new systems comes out the Wii will fall behind pretty quick in sales, though, and now they compete vs the Kinect and PS Move.

And yeah fonts are adjustable on the Nspire. I just mean that if TI decides to use a higher res screen, they'll need to make sure to do like Casio and adjust text size in consequence.

And I'm glad to hear that there's no fanboyism intended. Sometimes online some comments comes accross as that since this happens a lot on game/programming-oriented sites.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: calc84maniac on April 05, 2011, 11:41:46 pm
On the topic of resolution, I'm pretty sure I read on TI's site that the screen is still 320x240 pixels. Understandable, because otherwise it would be pretty hard to make the OS compatible with both old and new models if the resolution was different.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 05, 2011, 11:44:54 pm
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I think Nintendo took the advantage that most of their games were more oriented for kid-like games that didN't require good graphics as much and spent most of their time trying to find an innovative way to entertain people, and the hardware suffered.
That is quite likely, however the other possibility is that it is far cheaper to use older, slower components, thus increasing net profit.
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Once new systems comes out the Wii will fall behind pretty quick in sales, though, and now they compete vs the Kinect and PS Move.
I'm sure they are working on a motion sensing peripheral right now.

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And yeah fonts are adjustable on the Nspire. I just mean that if TI decides to use a higher res screen, they'll need to make sure to do like Casio and adjust text size in consequence.
If they ever choose to use a high quality, high resolution screen I'm sure they would make the fonts readable. Such an event is exceedingly unlikely, given TI's cheap habits, because high quality screens are very expensive.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: apcalc on April 05, 2011, 11:45:45 pm
On the topic of resolution, I'm pretty sure I read on TI's site that the screen is still 320x240 pixels. Understandable, because otherwise it would be pretty hard to make the OS compatible with both old and new models if the resolution was different.

Yep, the screen definitely is still 320x240! :)
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: JosJuice on April 07, 2011, 08:39:03 am
Here's a three-minute video of CX hardware action that I found on TI's YouTube channel.



I facepalmed when I heard what music they had picked...
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 07, 2011, 12:37:09 pm
Well, at least the screen's response time is better.
It looks like the CX is still underpowered, as there is still lag in the menus. Also, the 3d graphing resolution and speed was kinda lame. I really hope the CX2 will have at least a 500Mhz ARM9 CPU... See video below for what even a crappy first-gen iPhone can do:
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: calc84maniac on April 07, 2011, 03:14:34 pm
Well, at least the screen's response time is better.
It looks like the CX is still underpowered, as there is still lag in the menus. Also, the 3d graphing resolution and speed was kinda lame. I really hope the CX2 will have at least a 500Mhz ARM9 CPU... See video below for what even a crappy first-gen iPhone can do:

TI isn't exactly known for writing optimized code. But aside from that, the iPhone has a 3D graphics processor. It's not really fair to compare that to a software renderer.
Title: Re: a video about the cx or something
Post by: mikehill2003 on April 07, 2011, 03:59:47 pm
I'm pretty sure that the application I posted a video of did not use the iPhone's GPU to create the graph. It was using OpenGL to draw it, but the CPU did all of the computation.

It's 2011. Three years ago I could buy an iPod touch for $200 with a 400Mhz CPU and an OpenGL 1.1 GPU. Today, $200 gets me an iPod with a 1Ghz CPU clocked down to 800Mhz, and OpenGL ES 2. The games I've been able to make for the current gen iPod can't even run on the older ones, because the hardware has improved so much.

Apple has at least been improving the hardware on their products. TI has not been keeping up.
The Nspire CX's memory and screen are better then the older models, but the processor appears severely outdated.