Texas Instruments – BA II Plus Professional Financial calculator acquired!

I bought this advanced financial calculator (the Texas Instruments BA II PLUS Professional) for all my complicated calculations and to manage my portfolio of assets. Actually, this is primarily used only by CFA’s and CPA’s as its one of the only two authorized calculators for their examinations etc. Its cool!

Its got all the calculations of financial analysis that we traditionally use the excel sheet for. ex: percent change, compound interest, time value of money and amortization worksheets, cashflow worksheet, bond worksheet, depreciation worksheet, statistics worksheet,  interest conversion worksheet, profit margin worksheet, breakeven worksheet etc.

It is ideal for use in:

1. Finance

2. Economics

3. Banking

4. Accounting

5. Real Estate

6. Sales

7. Marketing

8. Investment

9. Business management

Actually, there is only 1 place in the whole of India where this calculator is available and that is in Cranes Software International (service road, off airport road, Indiranagar) – since I am located at Bangalore, I personally drove upto the place and picked it up recently!

The calculator comes with a 1-year warranty and is serviced directly by TI at Singapore. To be eligible for the replacement (should there be any problem during the 1st year of usage), one needs to have a photocopy of the invoice they (Cranes) provide, the calculator itself and a covering letter stating the exact problem.

I will have a regular update on how I put this calculator to good use in the coming months/years. The first time I heard about this calculator was 4 years ago when I was reading the book – Buffettology by Mary Buffett where she made a mention of a financial calculator that is used for investment calculations. Of course, there is an easier way to do these calculations and that is our traditional excel worksheet but this one helps you be mobile while putting the powerful work of finance at your fingertips!

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I was told by the sales person who sold it to me at Cranes that this is replaced free of cost by TI. The piece I purchased is ‘Made in China’. This reminds me that of late, almost all of the manufactured goods we purchase are made in China, Malaysia. The earlier SONY Ericcson mobile (W810i) that I purchased in March 2007 was made in Sweden at the Ericcson facility but the replacement model I bought when I lost my Nokia N-73 was manufactured closer to home at their facility at Malaysia – the performance, look n feel of both units is obviously the same. The Nokia N-73 was ‘Made in China’ again and while it came with a plethora of features, it wasn’t done delicately – it looked a little crude in finishing! The DELL Desktop again comes shipped from their facility in Malaysia. Recently, my DELL desktop has had issues with the power supply SMPS getting burnt out once due to some power issues and it was replaced by DELL free of cost, my music sound box with speakers were also replaced by DELL free of cost twice due to it also getting burnt out.

This is because the DELL desktop has a complete cover warranty and hence one does not have to bear replacement costs! This is a big relief.