Do you think we'll have issues with the name at some point?

I don't think so. Doing a search through USPTO, no company has a name that sounds like "Uberspire." A problem could rise when someone else tries to trademark the name in the future. I've been dedicating my own money to developing this project and don't really have spare funds to file in an application trademark. If someone else registers the trademark, I'd think they would have a hard time using it have been making use of that name for a while online (type Uberspire into the search engine, all the records of the name Uberspire relate to this project) and I own the commercial domain (so they'd have to buy it from me? That might be a good thing actually, since this project does need funding).

You also are missing an essential button: ? !
joking (not that I would be angry if you add it )

We could add it to the pi key (Shift + pi).

Woah the Nspire has no Sin/Cos/Tan buttons? I sure hope it has such features, though... all scientific calcs, even the cheapest ones, got them X.x

Well, the TI-nSpire CX and the Touchpad doesn't have them. You have to go through the Trig button or type it on their ABC keypad. Kind of really inefficient for those who want to crank out the trig. I also noticed that TI has ditched the TI/HP American arithmetic convention (all the arithmetic operators in a single column) and adopted the Casio/Sharp Asian convention (arithmetic operators arranged in square formation) for reduction in hand movement. However, I think TI's new keypad is still inefficient as it forces the user to type/remember commands or dig through menus. I favor key combos, but that's just how I feel. I feel I can get things done faster that way.

But yeah I am so impatient in seeing that calc prototype in action at one point. It just looks so great and I wish you the best of luck in reaching your goal.

Heh, trust me, there's no one is more excited to get this out than me and it would be a big relief. I can hardly imagine what the people in the community will be able to develop and achieve when they get their hands on this. I'll bring the hardware and you guys write the awesome software, deal? I strongly feel that this device can have a strong positive impact.

Aside from the keyboard, are there any other input methods (like something analog) or extension ports (USB) planned?

On both Editions, I plan to have an external USB standard port where you could connect USB devices such as hard drives or mice. For something like a gamepad, it kind of depends if the driver exists for Linux, because certain gamepads require certain drivers corresponding to its own unique controls, whereas with a mouse, most have 2 or 3 buttons, so most mouses can be covered by a generic mouse driver. But it's totally possible. Most likely, more of the popular controllers (like a Logitech Dual Action), would work on Linux without much trouble.

I have a little question: Will you stick with that Armstrong gui, or will you switch to another one?

It's up to the community. Angstrom provides other alternatives like Qt or icewm. The one I used was X11 with GTK and GTK is theme-able. Porting Android actually wouldn't be much trouble to port to the UberGraphX, but who would want a cellphone/online dedicated operating system on their calculator? Of course, the decisions and choices in software will most likely change once you guys really see what the hardware is capable of. More reason for me to get this thing out so we can hit the floor with developing software. Hopefully by summer, people will have free time to help out with the software.

This weekend is when I plan to go over and double check the hardware (haven't looked over it in a while), so it'll be a busy time for me. I'm thinking that by early June, I might be able to start shipping out the first UberGraphX units. I'll elaborate and explain what I'm talking about later. I need to think this out a bit more.

If you're gonna have a USB port where you could potentially connect HD's and stuff, will there be a power adapter to connect to an outlet or something to help power those devices? My friend once connected his 500GB portable HD into his TI-89 and it instantly drained his calc so it'll need something like that for the more power hungry devices.

Standard USB ports only provide 500ma of current. His external hard drive probably already had another port on it for power, sometimes in the form of a second USB port. With high current draw devices, you would usually want a second power supply anyway.

Quote from: HOMER-16 on April 06, 2011, 07:45:07 pm

If you're gonna have a USB port where you could potentially connect HD's and stuff, will there be a power adapter to connect to an outlet or something to help power those devices? My friend once connected his 500GB portable HD into his TI-89 and it instantly drained his calc so it'll need something like that for the more power hungry devices.

Standard USB ports only provide 500ma of current. His external hard drive probably already had another port on it for power, sometimes in the form of a second USB port. With high current draw devices, you would usually want a second power supply anyway.

No it's single usb powered. Idk, maybe his batteries were low?

Well, I was originally googling around to find out what was the release date for the TI-nspire CX (since they're being overly cryptic about it), when I happened to stumble upon one of your posts. This is everything I could want and more, and there's no way I'm getting a TI now. If there's any official way to "sign up" for the preorders before you actually start taking preorders, I'd love to do so soon. Unfortunately, it still seems that you're being plagued with web-hosting issues. I managed to view the homepage for a bit but that's about it and now it's displaying nothing but errors again.

On a technical sidenote: I loved the renderings you posted on page 11 (I believe) of this topic. However, I noticed that your "numpad" so to speak has a rather... peculiar arrangement--specifically numbers 1-6. I'm still not sure if there's just something wrong with my eyes since no one else has mentioned it.

I registered for this site just to post this. I really hope you can get enough funding for this.

uberspire.com just went down.  Like, a minute before this message is posted.
"defaultwebpage.cgi"

It doesn't load for me too. RemovedFromGame.com is down too, perhaps they have the same host, which is down?

Nop, they have a different host.

Then it should be pure coincidence.

Well, I was originally googling around to find out what was the release date for the TI-nspire CX (since they're being overly cryptic about it), when I happened to stumble upon one of your posts. This is everything I could want and more, and there's no way I'm getting a TI now. If there's any official way to "sign up" for the preorders before you actually start taking preorders, I'd love to do so soon.

Actually, you can post a comment below: http://www.uberspire.com/?p=69. I'm trying to get a rough number of how many people would like to preorder an UberGraphX.

There's been some confusion as to which version of the UberGraphX has what. Here's the solidified specs (the minimum guaranteed): http://www.uberspire.com/?page_id=53

Regarding the development, I've been pretty lazy lately. I've still yet to go over and do one last check over the design and casings. Meanwhile, there's been some good discussion on some other forums regarding the keypad. If you guys have any suggestions for the keypad layout, now would be a good time to say them. I plan to, by the very latest, at the end of this month to finish checking over the designs. By sometime next month, the first plastic prototypes of the casing should arrive and I'll post some pictures of them.

As for getting out units by June as stated in my last post, we're gonna need to build some pre-production models to 1) check the manufacturing process and 2) have some models to undergo FCC and CE certification. So if there is anyone who is really wants one soon or wants something that may be a rare collectors item in the future, there might be a possibility that some pre-production models may go for sale.

EDIT:

As for the host I think you should switch hosting. I would even be willing to give you space on my old 1and1 space if you wanted to, although I'M unsure if I would be able to setup the domain name for it. Everytime I check your site it's down or takes several minutes to load.

Thanks for offering your help, I appreciate it, but it may be more trouble than what it's worth. The hosting has been quite erratic, but it's been because my host been trying to transition to another server. It should be get better within the following weeks. It kind of sucks though, that around the time I revamp the site they have to do this.

By the way personally I think you might want to change your nickname at one point on your site, because TI might go insane if this is successful and accuse you of using the spire part of Nspire in it and forces you to remove anything that looks like the Nspire name from your site. You might win, but TI is just like that, sometimes (seeing what happened with the key factoring 2 years ago).

On my site, I go under "GoodStuff", unless you're referring to the domain name. I'm not a trained legal expert, but I would assume that they would have trouble having a good case against me. Googling "spire" leads to many other sites, companies, products, text and images that include "spire". If trouble does happen, we'll just have to change the name.

Actually, you can post a comment below: http://www.uberspire.com/?p=69. I'm trying to get a rough number of how many people would like to preorder an UberGraphX.

If there was a price average of the preoder perhaps I could say something