TI-Nspire, Future of Texas Instruments

!±8± TI-Nspire, Future of Texas Instruments

For over 15 years, Texas Instruments has owned the graphing calculator marketplace. Since the release of the TI-81 graphing calculator, TI has grown their following by improving that original TI-81 into the TI-82, TI-83, TI-83 plus, and eventually, the TI-84 plus. The TI-84 plus is still remarkably close to the TI-81. Despite the fact that the TI-84 has been incredibly popular, it's a dated device. Texas Instruments realized it was time for a new platform.

So in in 2007, Texas Instruments made public their new calculator, the Nspire. The improved features from the old product line were striking. On the old TI-84, the menus were odd at best, nonsensical at worst. It was hard for beginners just to figure out which button to push, and then the menu would fill the entire screen. With the Nspire, drop down menus are the norm, meaning students can stay in the screen they were working on and pull down a menu the way they would on a computer. Among other features are the highest resolution screen available on a calculator, the ability to save documents, a spreadsheet mode, mathprint for virtually all mathematical symbols, and a vastly improved system for graphing equations, simplifying the 84's ancient interface.

Frankly, the TI-Nspire made the TI-84 look like a dinosaur, and yet, the first reaction in the market was tepid. Why? TI didn't anticipate the reaction of two influential groups. First, despite positive TI-Nspire review s, educators were initially hesitant to adopt the Nspire. Many had just spent too much in the old TI-84. That was the case both in terms of the time invested learning the TI-84 and in terms of the school budget invested on classroom sets of TI-84 calculators. Texas Instruments tried to ease that consternation by offering a TI-84 keyboard that made the TI-Nspire look and act like a TI-84, but many felt that defeated the purpose of the Nspire. The other group that was cautious about the Nspire was the hacker community. At first, the TI-Nspire didn't offer programming as an option. Later, an OS upgrade offered some programming, but it wasn't enough to win over the programmers.

Lately, the Nspire has been gaining traction. Texas Instruments has noticed, getting rid of the Silver Edition of the TI-84. Now, however, TI finally faces competition from a competitor's calculator, not just its own TI-84. Casio has revealed its answer to the TI-Nspire. The Casio Prizm offers many of the same features as the TI-Nspire at almost the same cost, but offers two extra features with backlighting and the ability to display color pictures. The Prizm is set to be out in January 2011.

The Nspire finally has traction with buyers, but will face tough competition from the Prizm. The question now is whether the educator loyalty and user support they've created over the last 20 years will be enough for the TI-Nspire.