http://mic.com/articles/125829/your-old-texas-instruments-graphing-calculator-still-costs-a-fortune-heres-why
As a math teacher, it was frustrating to tell high school students they needed to spend $100 or more on an outdated piece of technology that I knew was overpriced. That was more than 5 years ago, and math teachers are still telling their students this. Now, working on building digital curriculum, I have the frustration of knowing that the $100+ students spend on a calculator is probably better spent on a Chromebook or a cheap tablet, either of which is far more powerful than the calculator. However, these calculators fill a certain niche and their lack of power and connectivity makes them allowable during testing, a "feature" TI is happy to preserve as long as they can.