A Top Calculator

I own quite a few calculators, at least 11. I bought the TI-36X solar because it looked like the best scientific calculator at Radio Shack, and it looked pretty functional.

This TI (Texas Instruments) calculator has all the basic functions that appear on a scientific calculator, such as TRIG functions and Logarithms. The calculator is arranged in a compact way and there are many functions crammed onto the keyboard. So much in fact that a 2nd and 3rd function keys are needed. I do not find this a hindrance, however, since everything is clear and easy to understand.

The case covering of the calculator is satisfactory, although not as good as some. With the TI-36, you can solve two-variable statistics, which is pretty helpful for finding the slope and intercept of a series. Other features of this calculator include a combination and permutation solver key, although there is a different way of entering it. Say you want the permutation of 10 taken 4 at a time, which is 10P4. You would have to enter 10, then press the X--Y key, then 4, then the nPr key, instead of 10 nPr 4. It's not that bad, though, once you get used to it.

This calculator features eight scientific constants, and five unique conversion keys, or ten conversion possibilities. The constants include:

-Speed of light
-Gravitational acceleration
-electron mass
-Planck's constant
-Avogadro's Number
-Ideal Gas Constant
-Universal gravitation

And conversions include:

inches--centimeters
Liters--Gallons
Kilograms--Pounds
Celsius--Fahrenheit
Grams--Ounces

This is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the CASIO FX991W's 40 scientific constants and 20 unique conversions or 40 conversions in all.

The TI-36X has three memory keys, which must be access by pressing the memory operation such as STO- and the number 1, 2, or 3. A little unorthodox, but still useful.

Once thing I did not like about this calculator is the fact that if you press the ON/AC key which means On/All Clear, everything, including the memory gets erased. This is undesirable if you have something important in memory like the sub-result of a calculation and you accidentally press the on button and everything is erased.

The solar power works in really dim lights unlike the CASIO FX260 solar, which is nice for those dark rooms with insufficient lighting. There is no battery, although I found one was not needed.

Besides this one minor flaw, the calculator, once you get used to it, is a nice powerful scientific calculator which will be of much use in many situations. The only scientific calculator that I've used which is better is the CASIO FX991W.

Update: Sep.15.2001
I'd just like to make a small update, I've noticed that this particular calculator, the TI-36x, is quite slow in some operations. The most noticeable delays come when using TRIG, power, and factorial functions. The factorial of 69 took at least three seconds, where on the CASIO fx-260 solar took less that 1/10th of a second. Small flaw, this is still a good calculator.