Category: Geeks r Us
Not sure if PDA's is the correct word. My wonderment is why would a blind person choose something like braille sense, pacmate, or braile note over a laptop? Laptops are a whole lot cheeper. I'm very very tempted by the braille sense, but why not just get a laptop? What do you all think? Plus and minuses of these devices? Come on geekers, help a girl out! Smile, thanks!
PDAs' are lighter, smaller, and have longer battary life. Also it allows braille to be integrated into the unit, unlike a laptop where you have to carry around a display and plug it in. I have both a laptop and braille note, and here's my impression. PDAs are good if you need something to take notes with in class, do basic email, and basic web serfing. If you want to program, do a lot of math with programs such as matlab store a lot of data, etc you need either a desktop or laptop. PDAs will give you 10 or more hours of battary life which a laptop won't do. One other advantage to a PDA is gps. Both the braille note and packmate have GPS under active devolipment which makes travveling a lot easier. To my knolidge there is no laptop GPS solution for a laptop and even if there was carying around an open laptop to enter commands would be much more cumbersom then carying around a PDA.
There are pros and cons of both devices. I agree with all of the comments in the previous posting. GPS is a nice solution nto, as far as I know, currently offered with a laptop, but a laptop can do things and PDA can't do, and vice versa. Also, most of the PDA's come with an option to have a Braille display integrated or bundeled with the unit, definitely a good thing. If you have any further questions, feel free to write me privately.