What's Out There for Handheld Math?

PowerVegetable asks: "What's the story with handheld computation? Not address books and schedule reminders; I'm talking about the type of stuff computers were invented for. Anyone who's used Mathematica or Maple knows what desktop computers are capable of these days math-wise, but handheld computation seems to have fallen behind on the innovation front. Cell phones and handheld game systems have certainly enjoyed rapid advancement, so where are the handheld mathematical portable oracles? What's available that doesn't have obscure menu systems, bad displays, underpowered processors and unwieldy programming languages? Pickings are slim in the hard-coded calculator industry, but what about Pocket PC's or other programmable portables? Is there any portable solution out there that's more capable than my old HP49g?"

Re:Ummm....

[afidel]

Actually what you do with Ti calculators is put your commonly used functions (Sumation, Integration, Derivation, etc) into your custom menu, then calling it up is only two keys away, one for custom menu, the second for it's numeric quick-key =) Spelling functions out does not work most of the time as the functions are called by an internal symbol which is represented by a human readable lable. The biggest problem with the Ti92/89 is that their CPU is DOG slow. The best solution I have seen is to run a Ti-89 emulator on a linux and ARM based handheld, of course then you lose all the nice hard buttons only to have them replaced by slow software buttons. My solution was to just take the laptop to class with Maple once the Ti-89 got unbearably slow.

Re:Derive on HP 200LX

[CaptKilljoy]

The CAS used on the TI-89, TI-92, etc., is Derive.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I always wondered why TI bought out those guys.

Still, I believe that the HP 200LX+Derive combo is superior to the 68k based TIs because of greater RAM and a better display, not to mention the integrated PIM software (which was very good for its time) and DOS compatibility of the 200LX.

It's a pity Derive never came out for Palm or WinCE.

Whatever happened to the 80186?

[fm6]

I used to work for Convergent Technologies, which made 80186 systems running a proprietary OS [cs.uu.nl]. This is the first time I've heard of an 80186 DOS system. I've often wondered why the industry basically skipped that processor.