Quote:
Originally Posted by elcreative
That is the point... these older calculators are actually way more complex, no single chip with everything on but despite this they just keep working...
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I remember my Texas Instruments TI-30 calculator, purchased when I started high school about 33 years ago. It was a good value. It cost about $25 dollars then. However, that was a lot of money. My first job paid something like four bucks an hour. So it cost six hours work. The Sony T1 I got for Chrismas cost 80 dollars, which is far less in terms of hours worked.
That TI-30 could really soak up the abuse, though. I dropped it on many occasions. Pieces would fly apart and I'd have to snap it all back together. By the end of high-school, it was was pretty beat up, but it was still working. If I could still find it, I bet it would still work.
Now, the expensive calculators, which I used to look at covetously, cost two or three hundred dollars 33 years ago. That's more than an e-reader costs NOW! They certainly should be more reliable, considering their prices.