<p>I got the n-Spire because I barely ever used TI calculators, and the experiences I had with TI calculators were horrible. I hated how other TI worked, they seemed totally backwards to me, but the n-Spire seemed more logical to me. That said, I would’ve never bought a TI if one of my teachers didn’t take issue with my totally awesome and superior HP graphing calculator.</p>
<p>I got the regular n-Spire because I wanted a calculator that I knew wouldn’t be an issue for my math teachers. The regular n-Spire has a keyboard that converts it to an 84+ Silver, which is usually what teachers do their demo’s with, and it hardly ever an issue on tests. It also has a testing mode that disables any user memory for both keyboards…but don’t use this unless you have access to another n-Spire to take your calculator out of testing mode. I found this out the hard way.</p>
<p>I would’ve preferred the CAS version, but I didn’t know my teachers wouldn’t care.</p>
<p>Supposedly the n-Spire is supposed to be the future for top end TI calculators, but it’s not ready for primetime yet. TI still needs to do a lot of programming to make it a full replacement for the 89.</p>
<p>I’m not all that happy with the n-Spire. Only somewhat recently did it become programmable. The battery life sucks. It’s slow. The little buttons are so high that I have a hard time using the regular buttons quickly and without accidentally hitting the little buttons. If it were faster, more conservative with the batteries, and had stiffer little buttons, I could probably be very satisfied.</p>