Category: Geeks r Us
as I understand it, the PAC Mate, Braille Note Apex, Hims Inc, and Icon are made on a dead OS.
Does this mean there is nothing being develupted for the operation system anymore?
PAC Mate runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 if I remember right. is this the same with the other products? you can download Pockit PC applications which wil run on the PAC Mate. The Braille Note and Hims, INC you cannot downloadc any aplications for it.
Android is made to work with the Braille Plus made by APH. since there are a lot of Android phones out there, there will continue to be updates ( such as ice cream sandwhich, jellybean, etc.)
also Cinbien bassed phones (a lot of nokia's), such as 63rd, 65, are ao also dead? so me buying an older phone that say supported Talks and got talks, with elaquence, i wouldn't be abel to say do what?
Could you not get applications? I know the older phones did have a web browser, MP3 playback, and some had Wi-FY.
Icon was bassed off of Linix also. i saw a review of that that said you can get stuff for linix to work on it, if you knew how. is that right?
Dead os means that it's not going to be improved. You can get stuff for it, and that stuff will work. Still, if something broke, it probably won't get fixed.
So since dead OS means it wont be improoved, why would FS and Humanware still make the same old products and charge so much money for them?
There is a part of me that is very surprised that the PAC Mate is still made in its current incarnation, without at least new software or a new platform.
the f form factor could it be made say thinner? or to way less?
Because people know the names pacmate and braille note, humanware and freedom scientific can continue to demand money for them, and they will get it from uninformed people and state agencies.
i'm informed in that I know there are other ways, but like the way the PAC Mate is done. there are some things i could se that could be improved apon though.
however, when i see prices on eBay for $400, and know they are charging upward of $3000 that seems wrong.
though I will say, when i got mine in 2004, all these other new fancy ways wasn't out there yet.
The Icon runs a distribution of Linux, O(note spelling) which includes some proprietary bits, like the synthesizer and desktop environment. There are pre-packaged GNU Linux apps for the Icon and Braille Plus. Also, you can compile and install your own apps, if you know how. Linux is alive and well, even if Level Star is on the way out.
JH, there may be things that could be improved upon, but so long as the tech companies can get the money from uninformed consumers and agencies as Synthesizer put it, without making those improvements, they're not going to do it. And unfortunately, Level Star had some great ideas, but they seemd to be on their way out before they ever really got into the game.
Sorry I was not saying linix is a dead OS, by far is it ever :). Its windows 6.0 5.0 and soon 7.5 win windows 8 hits the market. Well let me leave win 7.0 mobile out of the picture, not sure how long it will be around. Win8 moble will take and has taken its place. It would be neet to see a win8 moble device soon.
As to levelstar, theoretically they're doing something (but probably not in reality) that would trump their icon many times over. I am not too enthused about the windows 8 devices because they will have more processor-intensive features in mobile devices. I fear battery and speed issues.
as I understood it, Levelstar was working with APH on the newer braille plus that just came out ?
If Level Star had enabled telephony and, maybe, some sort of GPS-based navigation, from the beginning, they may have been able to realize their potential as I saw it when I got my Icon. I'm sure they could have made their apps more performant, as well. Regarding the new mobile devices, time will tell. I sense a general trend, throughout IT, to require more to do less, with each generation.
the key word here is state and federal agency's. that is the bread and butter of the large adaptive equipment company's fs and humanware. Around 80% of there sales. School districts buy the pacmate for students however that trend is starting to switch around to iDevices.
That new iPod touch that's coming out next month is probably going to be the best iDevice out there for visually impaired school kids, as well as of course the iPad. I would go for those instead of a $6000 BrailleNote if it was up to me.
agreed.
The old notetaker model use to be viable before mainstream access came into play on devices like ios and droid phones and tablets. It's a shame that braille stuff has to be so prohibitively expensive.
I'd love to have a braille display for my iphone, but there's no way I can afford one at present. I'm not gonna spend 2 grand on a device that would provide nothing more than a minor to moderate convenience to me. I would also feel shitty about having a state agency buy something for me that I don't really need. It's a shame that these agencies still buy all this obsolete equipment and give companies like fs and humanware the idea that they can keep running these scams.
In the real world, if a product sucks, the business goes under and there's no more heard of it. Look at what's happening to rim, maker of the blackberry. Their stuff sucks and is incompatible, so the company's currently in the long drawn out process of tanking.
Unfortunately, the state rehab agencies who keep these scam artist companies in business aren't run by blind people, or really even for blind people. The rehab counselors have no idea what the hell they're doing when it comes to the massive amount of money that they throw around, therefore these rip off braille notetaker companies are still doing their thing.
I just wish there could be a braille display that didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Equal access isn't really equal when it costs thousands of dollars just to be able to read a book.
Guess I'll be sticking to audio books for now, lol.
I am thinking of selling my Pac mate qX. wonder if I could/
Agreed with post 15, its time blindness agency's say not to over priced note takers and look toward main streem access. Here ya go an idea just to toss out there, if a person wanted a note taker but wanted a full on OS then a netbook works. Heck even a Mac book air would work too.
Those who know me, no at this time I am not happy with apples practices but even I am willing to put that a side and say its cheeper to by a mac book air then buying a blindness product like a note taker.
A netbook with GNU/Linux and the Orca screen reader (included) is my note taker these days.
Hi all. I agree with all of this, the blindness companies are going to tank. And it'll be a sight to see, to har them say: "Sorry, folks. We can't compete! We suck1 big time!" I mean, look at JFW and WE. I'll die before I blow a grand on them, when I've got NVDA and the newly improved Narrator in Win8.
I really like the new Narrator voice. i'd like to make jaws work with it.
any way that can be done on XP?
I'm not all that sure. But I'll have you know that Freedom Scientific and HumanWare should quit now
I will leave the humanware comment alone because I agree with it but FS, come on, lets see NVDA work with CCE "Contact Center Express Desktop" and allow a user to click on different tabs that can not be gotten at via keyboard or flat review. I tried this with NVDA and guess what "fell". My job depends on jaws, that is a fact.
Yes, but who says this can't be accomplished. Have you seen how much NVDA has come? I started with NVDA with version 0.6p32. Let me tell you, it was horrible. SAPI support wasn't great, so all you had was ESpeak. It constantly went "paine" with each window, and it didn't give access to most things. When the mouse was moved, it constantly beeped at me. Now we have NVDA 2012.2 which has an add-on support so that things that don't work can be fixed, synthesizer and braille support, and accessibility for most applications. If something doesn't work, then that's just the fault of the application. There is a lot of stuff JAWS can't access either, and JAWS also can't claim a lot of innovation. For example, research it is hardly used because it is basically a way of going to the internet that is a little weirder. The OCR idea was good, and NVDA got it within a month. Can you show another great advance that JAWS has had?
About using the microsoft David voice with windows XP: No. It doesn't, cannot, and will not work with XP. Microsoft will never develop it for sapi5.1, because so much of the technology is different. It may end up working on seven, but seriously I doubt that.
Yes I can, back to CCE, I did try to use NVDA, even attempted to use the flat review cursor and guess what it red vary little. Another thing, some one go try NVDA with UPS world ship, both of these or one of these applications are used in a war house/shipping job. Even in some jobs that require a person to do shipping. I like NVDA but both have there place, jaws is good for applications that are not accessible out of the box and need to be scripted. NVDA is good for programs that need very little scripting. I bet some where in your lives your going to run into a program at work that will stump NVDA and jaws. Jaws will need to be scripted to work with the program. If I am wrong, please proove it to me and record NVDA successfully using UPS world ship.