Surtr

Hopefully you won't delete this...I'm just trying to clarify...

Downloading ROMs IS illegal, unless you own the calculator you are downloading the ROMs for. Most people use emulators to test programs they've written, and that's perfectly legal.

Having an emulator on a PPC would be nice, because then you have less to carry around, and $150 less in equipment to worry about being stolen, or broken. The problem is that once you have less to carry around, what do you do with your calculator? It becomes useless, and people sell it, and use the emulator instead, although they are no longer entitled to use the ROM. That means Texas Instruments woudn't being selling as many new calculators, because people are buying old ones, which results in profit loss, which is not a good thing for many reasons.

I think one of Texas Instrument's biggest fears with the ROMs would probably be an emulator on a PDA. If you have one on a computer, that's one thing, cause even laptops aren't as portable as a calculator, and most instructors aren't going let you have a laptop during a test, anyway.

On a somewhat side note, I think it'd be rad if TI made and gave out calculator emulators, so you could test out their calculators on the computer before buying them. I'm sure they'd still make more than enough money. Heck, they might make MORE money. I know I wish I could have used a TI-89 emulator before I bought it. I didn't even use half of the functions. I ended up selling it to my best friend, who has a use for it, and buying myself a TI-86, which is still more powerful than I will probably ever need.