TI-83 Plus Silver Edition

reviewed by Eve Richer, 15, US

Texas Instruments has a new product for students that is both a graphing calculator and a personal digital assistant. It’s called the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition. Not only is it a great calculator, but it also includes cool applications like a convenient periodic table of elements, study card software, a probability simulator, an organizer, games, and more. For instance, the "Organizer" application lets you store names, addresses and email addresses and helps keep track of class schedules and to-do lists. The games in the "Puzzle Pack" are fun to play. They helped the time go faster for me on a recent flight from Denver to New York, and my younger sisters enjoyed them too.

The "Study Cards" application is a flash-card type program you can use for review and self-testing. Pre-made card stacks are available from the Texas Instruments education web site for a variety of subjects. The calculator comes with a cable you can connect to your personal computer, so you can download the stacks and other applications from the Internet. User guides for the applications are also available online in Adobe Acrobat files. The best selection of stacks available now are in the areas of science and SAT vocabulary test preparation. There are also stacks for foreign language (Spanish and French), economics, English, art, music and math.

The TI-83 Plus Silver Edition has plenty of memory. It comes with 1.5 megabytes of available Flash ROM and 24K of available RAM. According to the manufacturer, it can hold up to 94 applications. The calculator comes with a one-year warranty.

I really like the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition calculator because it has so many different features, and it’s very easy to use. All the features it comes with are both useful and helpful. It’s surprisingly simple--although the many buttons and functions may make it appear complicated, it is actually designed so that first-time graphing calculator users can understand it easily. The manual explains everything very clearly so that it all makes sense. It also has a very cool outside design. Instead of the standard boring black found on most calculators, this one is clear metallic silver. I would definitely recommend that students include this calculator on their back-to-school shopping lists because it’s useful, convenient, and fun.