But I've got one question before I take the plunge: can you search your notes?

You cannot search your notes on the calculator. Also, I hope you don’t try to cheat with the notes.

And is there any Windows/Online emulator for the TI Nspire CX? I've found ones for older calculators but not this one. Thanks anyway.

If you need an emulator, I would recommend downloading the 30 day trial software from ti
There is the nspire emulator, but it is harder to use and worse than the software emulator.

physics doesn't need a lot of high end math calculations.

Indeed, even in Physics C, I have barely ever needed to do calculus

I just was testing this, because I could have sworn that you could do a a ctrl-F to search, but it turns out that it only works in the program editor, not the notes. This seems to be a bug, though I am not sure if it was designed like that on purpose.

Thanks.

Also, what does the Student software do? It is worth buying it? Thanks.

James

You can try it for yourself by download the 1-month trial

Also, is the TI Nspire 'future-proof'? I mean, will it last for the next 3 years? That's how long I'm planning to use it for. I don't want to spend this much on a calculator and it become outdated in a few months. Thanks.

James
 

Also, is the TI Nspire 'future-proof'? I mean, will it last for the next 3 years? That's how long I'm planning to use it for. I don't want to spend this much on a calculator and it become outdated in a few months. Thanks.

As Lionel could say, calcs are already outdated hardware. Even the day they come out they are outdated hardware. Now of course, they aren't outdated among calcs.
So, you wonder if the CX CAS will be outdated in 3 years ? See how long the 83+/84+ lasted

It depends. The Prizm is open to developpement, so there are quite a lot of people trying things on it (most of them being on Cemetech) but the Nspire is more powerful (once jailbroken) so even when there are less people working on it, there are more programs getting out on it. For example, no one could possibly port a GBA emulator on the Prizm. And Prizm people are still wondering about a GBC emu, while it is done since ages on the Nspire. If you want to compare their performances, check out Doom. You can see it run smoothly on the CX CAS (even on the Nspires non CX in fact) while it fails miserably to even lag on the Prizm.