Category: accessible Devices
i am thinking of getting an mp3 player or something similar with speech, but dont know whdther to get one of the daisy players or mp3 players made pecifically for the blind or to get a normal ipod or mp3 player and somehow install speech. What do people think?
Simple. If you intend to use it for school or work purposes, go with a player that plays Daisy and the RFBDPlus format, which, I think, limits you to VR Stream, Booksense or Plextalk (may be Book Port too). From what I've seen of Booksense and VR Stream I'm impressed, the ability to record directly into mp3 format is great, Daisy is becoming more and more the mainstream solution for accessible text books and Daisy also allows efficient reading of audio, boko marks etc.
If the player is purely recreational you can go with something like and Ipod and install the Rockbox OS. I, personally, just went with a Crative Zenstone as my work out/travelling/listening to music player. You can get them for as low as $25 for 2gb, they don't hve speech but they're simple in operation and work seemlessly with your Windows Explorer. Ipods are cool but I didn't feel like either using lling Rockbox so this was the quick and easy solution. I don't think any commercial mp3 player will play Daisy and definitely not RFBDPlus, although many do play Audible format, which is very impressive.
probably be listening to music and some daisy format stuff.
if you want the daisy functionality then your choice is one made speciffically for the visually impaired.
You might see what kind of price the Booksense is going for over there, Harmony. Its more costly than the stream, but you do get some additional functionality. If you have Office 2007 and being able to play files in the .dox format is important to you without converting them, I think the Booksense is the only player that will do that as of now.
Lou
The other good thing the Booksense does is recording in .mp3 format directly, not in a propriatery format like the VR Stream. I've heard good things about the Plextalk too but I don't know anything about it. I am in the process of getting a Booksense so looking forward to it when I get one. But I know lots of people are very happy with their VR Stream and it was a close second on my wish list followed by the Plextalk. These are among the most versatile and reasonably priced devices I've seen from the A.T. industry so I'm really happy to see something like this.
i never got to see the book sense, only the stream, but i have heard good reviews of it though.
I have a stream and am very happy with it, but I got to see the booksense at NFB convention and it is extremely cool. If I was in the market for a player, I'd go with the booksense over the stream. Like others have said, it's a little more expensive but it's got some cool features that the stream doesn't have. I was especially impressed with how small the booksense is. Like I said, I love my stream and I'll stick with it for a while, but I think the booksense is now the way to go if you want music plus daisy and other specialized book formats.
I have the booksense and absolutely love it!
I bought the xt model, it sells for $449 until Sept. 30.
The XT Model features over the standard are the radio, bluetooth, and 4gb of internal storage. You also receive a 8gb sd card.
The standard model is red, and comes with a 4gb sd card.
As much as I love, love the booksense, I feel like I need to tell you guys there are some significant bugs. I hear that gwmicro is hoping to address these with the first firmware update, hopefully by the time school starts.
I personally haven't been too bothered by too many bugs, but I am looking forward to them fixing the daisy bugs. Right now, the booksense is having a hard time keeping your spot in a book.
The mp3 is amazing, and I am thrilled with the radio! It reads the frequencies and you can have up to 6 presets!
Good luck with your decision. I highly recommend the booksense!
a friend of mine has the booksents and he picked that over the ipod because as far as downloading to it it puts things automaticly where they are supposed to go you don't have to do it manualy
i also herd that for the book sense they are hoping to put d r m w a m file format in it. With the next update.
Yep, the way I understand it, they want to have d r m w a and rfb&d by the time school starts.
sounds cool. Wish i could have a look at the book sense before i decide whether to buy it.
just looked at the r n i b website, but whats the difference between the stream, plextalk and milestone players?
Well, the Milestone is smaller and flatter than the Stream. Someone just did a review of the Plextalk on Blind Cool Tech, so I don't know much about it. The milestone is nice, but the versions I've seen don't support Daisy format materials. It records very well, however. I think it is a very nice simple to use machine, but is overpriced for what it does. I've recommended it for some of our clients, however, because the controls are very tactilly discernible, and are widely spaced.
Lou
i listened to the blind cool tech podcast and now torn between the stream and plextalk. I looked at rnib site and apparently the milestone does support daisy, but not as much as the other players/recorders.