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From: jdoliva on 11 Apr 2008 20:29
May I correct you?

"Left-shifting" that soft key will attempt to convert whatever is in
stack level 1 to that unit,
if the units agree...
"Right-shifting" the soft key will divide by that unit.

> On the 50g with soft menus (-117 SF), units are very easy to use. [r->]
> [UNITS] (the 6 key) brings up a soft menu of types of units (e.g.
> length, area, volume, time, speed...). Each of these contains the
> units of that category. Pressing the corresponding soft key multiplies
> whatever is in stack level 1 by that unit. Right-shifting that soft
> key will attempt to convert whatever is in stack level 1 to that unit,
> if the units agree (i.e. you can't convert 5 feet to hours). Finally,
> left-shifting the soft key will divide by that unit. This is much
> easier than the CONVERT command.

From: sc_usenet on 12 Apr 2008 11:31
On Apr 11, 8:29 pm, jdol...(a)gmail.com wrote:
> May I correct you?
>
> "Left-shifting" that soft key will attempt to convert whatever is in
> stack level 1 to that unit,
> if the units agree...
> "Right-shifting" the soft key will divide by that unit.
>

My mistake. Thanks for the catch. :)

S.C.

From: username localhost on 12 Apr 2008 13:36
On Apr 11, 8:01 pm, sc_use...(a)hotmail.com wrote:
> On Apr 11, 2:28 pm, username localhost <username.localh...(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I'm not sure if Nspire has a version of the equation editor built-in,
> > but it would not surprise me. Assuming the Nspire support for units is
> > the same as the TI-89's then it is by default slightly nicer than
> > HP50g's unit support. Etc.
>
> I have both the TI-89 Titanium and the HP 50g and think the 50g has
> much better unit support than the 89-Ti does *if you know how to use
> the HP*. The ideal method of unit manipulation is not discussed in the
> user manual -- instead, a slower, more cumbersome method is
> demonstrated.
>

First notice that I said by default. Further, it is obvious that one
is intended to use the softkeys
rather than the choose menus. The features you mention are indeed
mentioned in the manual too.
However, The TI-89 comes with the ability (in fact the default
behavior) of simplifying units. To do that on the HP50g requires
external software. The HP50g appears to lack support for units in
matrices.
Then there are two small things i slighty prefer on the TI-89.
One is that "_m" is valid, and "1_m" is not required. Annother is that
custom defined units
are stored with a leading underscore in their name, making it
extremely clear when browsing what they are.
Finally, I do like the fact that constants in the ti-89 use the same
system as units. This makes sense. After all,
is 'c' really a contant, or is it also a unit. when one says 0.95c
they are effectively using it as a unit, not as a constant.
How about 5g's? Same thing. I find that terribly convient. While this
could obviously be replicated with custom units, that again
is not a default feature.

From: sc_usenet on 12 Apr 2008 14:03
On Apr 12, 1:36 pm, username localhost <username.localh...(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Finally, I do like the fact that constants in the ti-89 use the same
> system as units. This makes sense. After all,

Not sure what you mean here, but the 50g's CONLIB (constants library)
expresses all the constants in terms of built-in units (e.g. g =
9.80665 m/s^2; h = 6.626E-34 J-s; etc).

> is 'c' really a contant, or is it also a unit. when one says 0.95c
> they are effectively using it as a unit, not as a constant.
> How about 5g's? Same thing. I find that terribly convient. While this
> could obviously be replicated with custom units, that again
> is not a default feature.
>
>

Sure, 1c = 299792458 m/s, so 0.95c = (0.95)(299792458 m/s) = 284802835
m/s, so c can be thought of as a constant that contains the m/s unit.

S.C.
From: Publicly Anonymous on 21 Apr 2008 18:44
username localhost <username.localhost(a)gmail.com> wrote in
news:ca509513-c78d-4fbb-bc03-fc40991551c1(a)u69g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

> On Apr 11, 1:55�pm, Publicly Anonomous Use
> <Public_Email(a)No_Public_Email.254> wrote:
>> For the facile articulation and manipulation of mathamatical
>> expressions,
>>
>> who triumphs? Nspire-CAS or HP 50G ?
>
> Well now, that is invoking a bit of a holy war, but the honest answer
> is that they both have strengths and weaknesses whose importance
> greatly varies with with the user, as well as with the user's
> experience with each.
>
> (I'm not very familiar with Nspire, but I'm reasonably confident that
> many of the overall differences in philosophy between the Ti-89 and
> the HP50g also apply to the Nspire).
>
> For example, the TI's auto-simplification is a nice feature, and often
> produces the desired result or very close to it. But if it fails to do
> so, there is relatively little you can do to convince it to transform
> the expression to the form you wanted. The HP50g simplifies very
> little by default, but has a wide array of commands to manipulate the
> result into your desired form. With expereince it is easy to get the
> form you want, but in the begining it is rather difficult. As for
> general entry of symbolic equations (or even numeric ones large enough
> that entering them step by step is error prone) the best testament to
> the HP50g's equation editor's design is the fact that it was ported to
> the TI-89 twice, once as a free app Hail, and once as EQW (originally
> available as a crippled free version, and a for-pay flash app
> version).
>
> I'm not sure if Nspire has a version of the equation editor built-in,
> but it would not surprise me. Assuming the Nspire support for units is
> the same as the TI-89's then it is by default slightly nicer than
> HP50g's unit support. Etc.
>
> The real bottom line is that the Ti-offerings are somewhat more user-
> friendly, and have a much shallower leaning curve, but the HP50g in
> general is far more powerful and customizable than TI's offerings. Of
> course there are almost certainly a few small exceptions, but that's
> life.
> Some other notes. Virtually all the functions in the the NSpire will
> work more-or-less as expected with symbolic arguments. For a variety
> of reasons, a fair number of HP50g commands do not have support for
> symbolic arguments, but in many cases there is a version of the
> function present that does have support.

I've got to choose one or the other very soon, (for a variety of reasons)
I'm holding a 38G, a 48S and the 35S, but I'm afraid I'll need something
newer, faster and more complex if I continue with classes.

I suppose, that while HP's rigour and precision is attractive, I need to
balance the HP advantages of confidence and speed with a low user-demand
during operation, as well as tactile sureity and simple durability.

I just can't decide yet. Someone mentioned, and I agree that graphic
calculators are not too common in the office, but I needn't worry about
that for a while.

One best tool, in an environment of academic theoretical abstractions,
hmmm.. I suppose I'll have to put both to my hands for a few hours.
Well, back to the mines...

Thanks; -as usual, the group's full of friendly articulate people with a
real sense to the working value of this type of equipment .


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