This has also bothered me for quite awhile. I think what nails the ridiculousness of graphical calculators is illustrated in this comic: http://xkcd.com/768/ h

This has also bothered me for quite awhile. I think what nails the ridiculousness of graphical calculators is illustrated in this comic: http://xkcd.com/768/ http://xkcd.com/768/ Seriously, though, as a student in CMU, and as a astrophysics major, I can attest to how unnecessary these calculators are. As long as it can perform trigonometry and logarithms, it satisfies the need. I like the author's idea of using "locked-down" netbooks instead. After all, a netbook installed with Mathematica or MATLAB will be much more similar to academia/industry level calculators.