Good Monday to you, or perhaps it’s Tuesday where you are! Whilst searching for something completely unrelated in my store cupboard this morning, I came across two devices which I haven’t used in a very long time. So, I got them both out and charged up their internal batteries.
The first of these devices is a Microsoft Signature tablet which I bought in January of 2015. It runs Windows and came pre-installed with Windows 8.1. However, having put it on line this morning, it installed a lot of major updates, as I haven’t used this thing since the end of 2015. When the system restarted, I updated the copy of JAWS 18 to JAWS 2018. I configured it to use the premium Vocalizer synthesiser which is my preferred speech engine these days. Next thing, it came up with an update option to Windows 10. To start out with, I decided to give that a go, despite the fact that I wasn’t convinced it would actually run Windows 10. I was very much mistaken on that assumption. It proceeded to download and install the update without a hitch, and I was able to install Windows 10 with full accessibility from start to finish. Now, it’s running all the latest updates, JAWS updates, DropBox, Microsoft Office 2016, all without a problem. But this just goes to show me that, if one puts aside one’s preconceptions about a device being slow, only 32-bit and not particularly powerful, one really can’t tell when running relatively resource-friendly tasks such as word processing, web browsing and even OCR work, one can still get an awful lot of value out of these devices. No, I wouldn’t use it for resource-hungry high processor intensive applications. But you know, this will do just fine as another portable solution. I have a small portable keyboard which is packed with all the usual keys you’d fine on a desktop, just a little smaller. That works fine with this device, and it brings another bonus. When I’m in close proximity to a charger, I have a lead that came with the keyboard which allows me to connect the Minix keyboard receiver and an external charging device both at the same time via the USB Micro connector on the tablet. Since it also has Bluetooth® 4.0 support, I can also hook up my Focus 40 Blue Braille display, and use the Braille keyboard as I like to do with JAWS these days. Another device I located, and I admit I’d totally forgotten about, is the Amazon Fire HDX tablet. That device has excellent accessibility inbuilt, and now that I’ve updated to the latest firmware and software suite, it also allows me to play movies and music from Amazon Music, plus Spotify via the Android app which, to my very great surprise, runs just fine on it. So there’s another device that I must remember not to hide away. Just shows you though, sometimes, it isn’t necessary to make a fuss about having the latest and greatest. To their credit, Microsoft has really got its act together with Windows 10. Gone are the days when everything had to be high spec in order to run. Now, virtually anything will run Windows 10 without a hitch. For me, this will be a huge bonus when I start running around the North-East of England doing training work for RNIB. ======================================== My compliments and kindest regards Gordon Smith: <gor...@mac-access.net> Accessibility & Information Technology Support Specialist.. This Message Was Created Using 100% Recycled Electrons. If you can avoid printing it, please do so. Think of the environment, save a tree! Contact: Twitter: @maciosaccess • UK Free Phone: 0800 8620538 • UK Geographic / Global: +44(0) 1642 688095 • UK Mobile/SMS: +44 (0) 7804 983849 • Vic. Australia: +61 38 82059300 • US/Canada: +1 646 9151493 ----------------------------------------
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
