Category: Geeks r Us
Hi all!
I'll be starting college in the fall, and I have no clue as to what note taker to get. Everything just looks so confusing to be honest..so many different brands and whatnot.
Any suggestions? I know I'm being vague so if you have questions please ask!
what exactly do you plan to use the note taker for, and how computer savy do you consider yourself? also how much do you have to toss around to get one of these or is some sort of organzation covering it for you?
that is the same question I have. Mind you, I am getting one for my job. I'm trying to decide which is better a braille sense or a braille note, since pacmate uses everything that is pretty considered obsolete.
Each notetaker has its advantages and disadvantages, so I agree that it really depends on what features you think are most important, plus how much you're willing to spend if you're the one paying for it. Of course, most of us will probably favor what we have as the best; I know I love the one I have. *smile* But honestly, I think a good chart to look at (at least for 3 of the notetakers) is at:
http://www.gwmicro.com/Braille_Sense/Comparison_Chart/
While this company only sells the Braille/Voice Sense notetakers, this chart still fairly compares the Braille Sense with the BrailleNote MPower and the Pacmate. You can also copy and then use this chart's feature list as a guideline to add in the details of other notetakers such as the BrailleNote Apex, the Braille Icon, a regular laptop, etc, that way you have a one-stop place to compare all the possible notetakers. Besides what we each would personally suggest, this chart might help you be able to look at and compare all/most of the possible features of whatever notetaking device you might be wanting to get. Hope this helps some.
As for me, I like the Braille Sense because it's light, has a removable battery, and for other reasons I can't think of at the moment. It turns out that it's perfect for what I use it for. All I do on it is listen to MP3's or sometimes the radio, record my class lectures, take notes, and read the braille-formatted files I download from Bookshare and NLS. While I realize there might be features I'm missing out on that other notetakers or a laptop might have, I'm happy with this one and can't see myself trading it for anything else.
I do have a lap top..guess i could lug it around with me but mind you it's a lap top..:) lol
I do want to record my class lectures..and take notes. I will look at the web site asap.
I too would go with the BrailleSense. It's what I would get if I were able to get a new note-taker right now. I like the feel of it's keys when I type on it, the way it's set up in terms of navigations, and especially its ability to interact with other devices. I've heard good things about the BrailleNote Apex, but know little about it myself. I've never seen one of those.
I've used the Pacmate, and the brailleNote, both with the qwerty keyboards. I hated both of them. If it were me, instead of getting a notetaker, I'd buy a netbook if I didn't want to lug around a laptop. here's why.
You have to keep notetakers charged, or else they tend to lose information. Notetakers, for me, were very limiting in what I could do on them; just word processing and a few games. I had to jump through hoops with them to get them into a filetype I could use on my computer, and then, I hated not having internet set up so I could e-mail them to myself.
I haven't used a braille sense, so don't know what it is, but my opinion of notetakers has been thoroughly tarnished.
I have used a BrailleNote and a BrailleSense, and I definitely prefer the BrailleNote. I think it is more user-friendly and that most of the commands are more logical; however, the BrailleSense operates more like a computer, so if you're more computer savvy than I am you might want to get that instead. I'm currently using the BrailleNote Apex, which is slightly lighter than the BrailleSense and has a removable battery, along with email and internet capability that rivals the BrailleSense. I also love the book reader feature of the BrailleNote, which the BrailleSense doesn't have.
That sounds interesting, and I'm honestly now interested in learning more about it. I think I'll take my own advice and copy and add to that comparison chart. I don't know much of anything about the Apex or most of the newer notetakers like that, as I've only used the Braille Sense, classic BrailleNote, Braille 'n Speak, and Braille Lite, and have only had brief tryouts of the MPower and Pacmate. So it will be interesting to read up on the Apex and other notetakers not mentioned in the chart and then add and compare them all with each other. *smile* For books, I just save them to a memory card, but the part about the Apex being slightly lighter than the Braille Sense does interest me since I tend to carry around my notetakers almost everywhere.
I forgot to mention that the Apex is thinner than the mPower or the BrailleSense.
I would consider spending the bulk of your money on a Braille display.
Then, you can connect with anything you wish. I just got my daughter an HTC MyTouch phone, and she will no doubt be able to take it to college with her in a couple of years. I was a PAC Mate user for 6 years, mainly because I needed a Windows Mobile device. But apps are no longer being developed for Windows Mobile 6.x and I do not know what the Apex or the BrailleSense use.
Just consider your world is going to be 3G and wi fi everywhere in a very few years: you're most probably young, and the expectation is going to be instant on everywhere and compatibility with so-called mainstream systems everywhere. In the modern ecosystem, apps are where it counts. The more apps your device supports, the better.
I just downloaded Pages and Numbers - a word processor and spreadsheet app - for my iPod. Android has one or fifty zillion said applications also, which you can get at a very reasonable price.
The expensive part for us now is Braille displays, because the average market does not use these.
There are external batteries you can get, in particular the Proporta USB external charger which runs at two amps rather than the typical 500MA portable charging stations. I'd put money on being able to power charge a Focus 40 Blue with mine, though a Braille display would suck that battery down to a flat in one charge probably.
The point I'm making by adding battery into the equation is many talk about battery life when they talk about the so-called blind ghetto devices. And, admittedly, the PAC Mate's battery was the envy of my sighted friends running old HP and Dell handheld Pocket PC devices about 6 years ago.
The trick to your battery, as I just told my daughter who is sighted, is be responsible with your wi fi usage: turn off the wi fi radio when you don't need it.
I would seriously consider investing most of your money from relatives, taxpayer-sponsored agencies, nonprofits or wherever you can get it, on a really good Braille display you can carry with you.
Get a Google account, and get apps that will allow you to upload your documents to Google Documents. This is what I have done for my Coast Guard duties: I am responsible for maintaining logs of radio communications for at least 7 years, longer if a SAR (Search and Rescue) is involved. Because of that, using the cloud is not only important but now an acepted means of proper secure storage of data.
So in summary, your device needs to do several things for you, no questions asked:
- Connect to wi fi
- have an ecosystem of ongoing development of apps (put in teen words as my daughter said last night: 'There are sooo wayy too many apps!')
- Onboard Bluetooth
- and for us as blind people of course it must have a reader that will support speech and Braille, as does the VoiceOver on the Apple devices.
Your Braille displays connect using Bluetooth serial just like your external GPS does.
If my daughter were blind I would have probably bought her the same or similar device as she just got, and spend what extra I could if I could to get a braille display. I think personally the agencies ought to seriously be making that a priority, so you kids going to college get displays that will connect to anything and everything Just doing a Google serch, it seems now more of the new ones do than don't.
I understand my perspective on this may be different: that the expectations are radically different from when I went to school with just a slate and stylus and a portable typewriter. .I'm not even saying don't get one of the blind devices: just place the same acid test to said devices as one would place to any mainstream device.
As to 3G compatibility? That is nice, but not necessary, if you have a phone doing 3G which will tether. Next March I plan to upgrade the wife and I to 3G phones, but will probably continue using my iPod for a ton of things, just tether it to the 3G when I need to.
I do not like the braille specific devices and think there are much more powerful and less expensive alternatives:
iPhone ir iPad with a braille display like the Braillepen 12 ($999 plus $30 for shipping) ... for $1500 you have a powerful mainstream set up with long battery life, tons of applications and bluetooth braille display that can be set up in a snap, for a forth of the price of Braillenote Apex and, yes, it can read Word 2007 files, something the Apex cannot import. The Braillepen12 has nice perkins keyboard that you can use to input text with Grade I or II braille, works nicely with Apple devices, as well as many other operating systems.
If you want more braille cells you can get a Focus 40 or similar display for arond $1500 I believe, and a Thinkpad X201 laptop, 12-inch for around $1100 (may be less on sale now).
I fell in love with the Thinkpad x series, 12 inch, super light (about 3 pounds), great keyboard, powerful dual core processor, anything you need (my only complaint is a start up time that is a bit slow, almost a minute, but it could be the profiles on my system and that it is bloated with all sorts of software, I do accessibility testing, math, coding etc).
I'd also get a Milestone/VR Stream/Plextalk Pocket to record lectures (PlexTalk has bookmarking cpabilities for audio recordings which is cool, Milestone is the smallest).
So, to break this down further:
iPad $500 (give or take $100)
Braillepen 12 (1000) or Focus 40 ($1000 ot $1500 approx), also Brailliant and Refreshabraille are good options, different prices but not much difference in feature set.
Milestone or Plextalk pocket ($250 to $400).
This is your mobile set up, may be add $80 for iPad external keyboard/carrying case and some money on apps).
Together this will cost you around $2000 to $2500.
This is a small, mobile package that you can carry in your pockets (the Daisy player/recorder and the Braillepen braille display) or a small carrying case (iPad), good battery life, mainstream with all the functionality you need and a good eco system.
The Braillenote Apex list price is $6200 I believe.
You can add a 12-inch laptop to this for another $1000 for very powerful performance, or you could try and get a used 40 or 80-cell braille display for around $1000 for 40 or $2500 for 80 (I have a 40 cell for sale, but it is not bluetooth however).
If you insist on note takers I would see if the Orion will be on the market by the fall. They have promised that note taker to be considerably cheaper, have good braille and to be able to run mainstream Android applications, it may even have cell phone connectivity, certainly will have internet and Bluetooth and most likely will include GPS functionality.
It was supposed to be launched in March but launch has been delayed. Hopefully this is not another BBlio adventure that takes years to come to market, so one might hope to see these even in July.
Cheers
-B
Personally, the only note-taker I've heard that loses its information frequently is the PacMate. That's the last of the note-takers I'd get. NetBooks are good, but I'd rather have a note-taker with a Braille display in one device than carry a NetBook and Braille display as separate ones.
That was true for the older PAC Mates.
You can't buy one like that anymore. The Omni stores all info in nonvolatile flash. I reset mine several times mostly not out of necessity, only to find that I still had all data and apps onboard and ready to go.
The old 2003 BX / QX series did have that problem and yes one had to be careful / keep backups, but not so for the Omni as I found out with some relief.
I have seen a few counselors here in the bay area of the idea that with a bluetooth keyboard and a braille display, the iPhone is the new note taker and the sure way to go. I don't think the iPhone is quite there yet but I could definitely see something like that sort of setup in the near future.
Oh it's there definitely, with the addition of a few apps. I use it exclusively for the Coast guard, keeping email, contacts, bank info, all the things I ever did on a PAC Mate and then some. Sighted people are using PDAs for the very same things, and for many of the very same reasons. So-called notetakers for the blind may have at one time filled a niche unattainable by the Newton and other available mainstream devices but not anymore.
While it is true that it is convenient to have a braille display a part of a device, one should also contemplate the cost of the device, is it worth $4000 to you to have the convenience of an attached braille display. Even if an agency is paying, couldn't the agency help three times as many users if they purchase a 2000 dollar equipment over a 6000 dollar option?
Now I happily admit there are situations where braille notetakers could make the most sense (still). Young kids that are learning, deafblind users (to some degree anyway, though the iPhone is catching up) and people who cannot deal with a fullfledged operating system or device and have additional learning disabilities, basically people who need custom simplified interface to work with computers.
For everyone else, especially those who are going to college, the benefits of the reduced cost and of working with the same devices as sighted peers should way outweigh the inconveniences. We need to continually push for accessibility to be built into mainstream devices, not be satisfied with a device made especially for us at 3 times the price and with vastly reduced functionality.
I think together we have a voice and are a market segment, and we should make our choices noticed.
Using an iPhone with the Braillepen display is really neat, you don't even have to take the iPhone out of your pocket to work with it, so the device on the table is the size of a calculator, add bluetooth headphones to the mix or a computer keyboard, and you have a wonderful set up.
Sure you need to buy note takers, ideally ones that synch up with services like Dropbox, but the cost is in the $5 range. There seem to be minor accessibility problems but, again, if we make our voices heard and deamdn fixes to them, something may happen.
Of course people have to choose what they like, and I am not saying braille note takers are evil, but it does bug me that the cost is so high, especially at times when agencies have less and less money to work with, and the only option is to find new and inexpensive technology that works for their users, or to reduce the number of users they can help.
I keep seeing the organizational side of this, working with reduced budgets, wanting to improve our user options, and by using mainstream technology like the iDevices, we all of a sudden can do both.
It may put a little bit more burden and responsibility of learning on our users, but I think that will ultimately work out better for them.
I concur. In the days before we had any computer access at all, we blind people were forced to sink or swim: either learn to cope with what was available to us or have nothing at all.
I never had any of the talking computers of the 1980s because they were too expensive for my family to afford me growing up. those days were different days, and we went through a time where apparently devices were developed that served a lot of people, but cast the illusion, albeit by accident IMHO, that blind people needed specialized things rather than adaptations to mainstream technologies. Perhaps now we have come full circle again, and the next generation, or this youngest generation, of blind people will be similar to my generation or at least those of my generation without any money for adaptive technologies as kids.
The exception will always be the Braille display, and I think excluding supposed blind ghetto devices from taxpayer-supported benefits to users, we can get a lot more Braille displays deployed on the general public.
So, as a curiosity, does the Braille Pen have cursor routing buttons? I did not see that anyplace on its technical specifications, though it may be assumed to have them.
Well, I've only used the Braillepen with an iPhone, and Apple does not really seem to deploy the independent cursor philosophy.
There is a joy stick in the middle that serves as the combination of the arrow keys and the enter key (pressing that button activates the item selected).
If you want to go into text navigation mode, there is a button combination you use to active the accessibility rutter thing (not a fan of that concept really).
I wish Braillepen had 8-key keyboard instead of 6, and there is some learning curve associated with the button combinations, though they're tried to keep things logical, such as function key with p (dots 1 2 3 and 4) is play/pause and so on.
I need to try this out with a Windows machine to see how it works.
I have seen a braille pen 12,(though never used it, as the one at convension had a flat battery), and it's size is pretty much the same as the refreshabraille 18. I find that using a refreshabraille is probably better, as size doesn't change too much and you get 6 extra cells. The refreshabraille has cursor routing buttons, six-dot braille keyboard, a joystick, and is a pretty nice display. Added to this niceness for me was the perk that the school system got one, had no idea what to do with it, and lent it to me.
Oh, brain fart on my behalf.
Braillepen does not have individual braille routing buttons for each cell.
Slight drawback with Windows apps definitely, not a big difference with iPhone/iPad (I always use 80 cell displays with Windows).
18 cells would be better definitely, so cudos to Refreshabraille.
I have a braille note...
and a labtop.
and i also like
it. fits. my needs.the bookreader, and reading.e note 4 gps.