Pros: Very powerful, lots of features, can do ANYthing.
Cons: Scares people who are technologically impaired and seems worthless to those taking remedial math.
The Bottom Line: Great calculator, great value, great features, great everything. Strongly recommend for high school, college, life, and any science-math-type work!
jbrukh's Full Review: Texas Instruments TI-89 Titanium Scientific Calcul...
There are many users out there that are scared by this calculator because of the 'menus' or the many 'buttons'. Note: if you don't already know how to use a calculator like this (i.e. for derivatives and integrals) or you lack the capacity to learn, then you shouldn't be using it in the first place. To these people, go with the TI-83 Plus or the TI-86 (NOT the TI-81 that someone recommended earlier.)
Otherwise, you will fall in love with this calculator. When I first got it, I spent a couple of hours just playing with it, and after that I knew all the basic functionality.
If you are in a calculus course, then you can check your work easily and with graphical output. If you are a physicist, you can work with units, create new units, etc. The software base that is compatible with this specific calculator is comparable to the software base for Palm Pilots.
Someone had said earlier that this calculator is missing trigonometric features. Most calculators don't have a direct key for, say, sec(x). However, on the TI-89 it is easily programmed into the calculator and incorporated into its general framework, as the 1/cos(x). Also, there are relatively few consumer level calculators out there that graphically carry out trig identities.
As for speed, graphing takes significantly less time than lower model TIs and most HPs, while computer-calculator connections take quite some time when transferring 2MB, but this is inherent to a small processor and is excusable because it is not often that you will need to update your operating system.
Before you buy this calculator (if you are still not convinced) search for Virtual TI in a search engine and the TI-89 operating system on the TI website. VTI is a computer emulator of the TI calculator and looks and works EXACTLY like the real calculator.
Graphing calculator handles calculus, algebra, matrices, and statistical functions 188 KB RAM and 2.7 MB flash memory for speed; plenty of storage for...More at Amazon
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