Re: Why do so many people love Teas Instruments?

I don't know, particularly, if it's true .... BUT, it sounds very much like
what a clever marketing department would do to prop up a product and
artificially guarantee loads of sales in a market where the "normal" demand
for the product has very much diminished over the last decade and a half..

It is probably true... or a close variation of it is probably true.

"The only reason" is probably also a function of what you're exposed to. How
many high school teachers, now a days, actually know what RPN is? How many
high school teachers, many of which are younger than 27 any more (by a long
shot in some instances), even REMEMBER that HP even made calculators.....
not that many of them would have ever had a NEED for an HP, even if they
WERE available to them while THEY were in school, some 5-10 years ago.

I get the impression that a large majority of folks that frequent this forum
have credentials in physics, engineering, architecture, surveying and other
heavily computational fields. I am sure that many of us, myself included,
are 40+ years old, went to college during the main-frame to PC
metamorphosis, and found hand helds indispensible from a portability,
capability and aviailability standpoint. It was hard to carry a VAX around
in your back-pack, or use one on a thermo final, or a chemistry final. Those
of us that had a need for such a device, and experimented between TI (or
equivalent) and HP back then, IMMEDIATELY saw the superiority of the HP
machines in terms of speed of use, programability, support, accessories and
after market applications back in the day.

MS does the same thing, btw, albeit more quietly. I teach Visual Studio
2005.Net at a local community college. I get TONS of free software from MS.
Actually, they, MS, are VERY available to programming educators. IF ya hook
'em when they're learning, you got a customer for life. If I called the
right number at school, I can walk home with a major version of any MS
software I want.

Matter of fact, if MS treated EVERY customer the way they deal with me
(being an instructor) that way, the rap they get would dissappear, even if
the short-comings in their products may not.

TO be fair, their software has "issues" that make me wonder at times, but,
overall, it's hard to find HUGE faults with Visual Studio.

Let's face it... often good marketing trumps capability of a product...
(remember the VHS vs. Beta wars?) VHS (JVC) won, Beta (Sony) lost. Although,
arguably, Beta was, in every respect, a better format.

(??)

--
Grumpy Aero Guy



<usenet77@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1187663876.252679.161190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I had this guy on another forum, saying that the only reason most
students use Ti's is due to contracts that Texas Instruments had with
the schools. Such as the school would give away some free calculators
and supplies and by this the school would have to agree to recommend
only Ti calculators.

is this true, and if so is there any documentation backing it.



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