Hello Everyone: After reading Jonathan's announcement, and all the traffic it's generated, I just wanted to put my two cents in as a user of the MPower. I've been part of the beta team for this awesome box, and I can tell you, if you've loved your BrailleNote or VoiceNote, you're going to be very impressed with this new technology. In this review, I'm not going to try and restate all of the new features of the MPower, just the ones I use and enjoy the most.
Firs, let me state very clearly that I AM NOT an employee of Humanware nor a distributor. I'm just a trainer and and industrial user of Adaptive technology with over 20 years of experience. I travel 2 to 4 times a month. Like you, I'm on a budget and won't buy, replace or put anything in my mobile arsenal that is not absolutely necessary or road tested. The new MPower is just such a device. Infact, I've actually been able to leave my laptop at home and it's been wonderful not to have to carry all that weight and all those extra peripherals. My VoiceNote has been a tried and true friend and I was not looking to replace it, until now. By far, my favorite feature of the new MPower is Blue Tooth connectivity. I've been using the MPower with my Nokia 6600, along with GPRS service from my cell carrier and it's been fantastic. For those of you not familiar with Blue Tooth, think of it like a short range wireless link between the MPower and other devices. These might be printers, PC's, external keyboards or in my case, a cell phone. Basically, as long as I've got cell service, I'm connected. So, wherever I am, in the car, on the bus, in class, at the airport or just sitting on my patio, I can email and browse to my heart's content whether or not their's a public wireless network anywhere around. At a conference last week, we got hopelessly lost. While my driver was going around in circles, I logged onto the hotel's website and was able to provide her with driving directions. The best part is that the phone never leaves the case on my belt. If you've ever struggled to keep two infra-red ports lined up while trying t o browse or download 100 pieces of email, your going to really appreciate this feature. Book junkies like myself, who enjoy reading books with their BrailleNotes, are going to be surprised how the faster processor improves their reading experience. I'm able to open and reposition within large texts literally in about a quarter of the time that it used to take. How much faster?? To give you some idea, Tom Clancy's novel, Sum Of All fears, is about a 940 page book. On my Voicenote, it took about 52.1 seconds to load. On the MPower, it took only 12.3 seconds. The speed of repositioning within a large document has been equally improved. With the increased onboard memory, you can take more books with you, but, you are not limited to just the onboard storage. Besides the larger flash disk (A very welcome change), there is a whole world of new storage options. You still have the rear compact flash slot as well as the PCMCIA slot, but there are also two USB ports and an SD (Secure digital) card slot. For those of you not familiar with SD technology, an SD card is much like a compact flash card only it can hold more data, is about one third the size (In all dimensions) and is somewhat less expensive. There is a reader out there that you can buy for your PC that will read both compact flash and the new SD cards. If you do a lot of transferring between your PC and the MPower, you'll definitely want to add this to your equipment list. Of course, you can always link up on Active Sync on either USB or via your local area network. I use to go around bragging that "I have over 300 books on this little compact flash" while showing friends the card. There reaction is somewhat more surprised when I show them a card that fits in my wallet and hol ds 4 times that amount. The only problem I have with these little cards is they are so small, that they are very easy to lose. . Of course, when I really want to take a bunch of files with me, I can hook up my Archos Arcdisk portable USB hard disk and have over 20 gb of storage available. All though that's getting somewhat carried away. Even I don't have that large a reading library. But, suffice it to say, that we've tested many different USB storage possibilities and most of them are very accessible and a breeze to connect. But, you say, what about carrying music files?? This brings me to the media player. I've always been jealous of my son who walks around with his IPod and carries our entire music library with him. As you may or may not know, the IPod is not very accessible, But, with the combination of the MPower and my USB hard drive, I can do the same thing. The sound quality is excellent, in stereo and until now, only those of you with a PK, know how much fun it is to listen to music and read email or a book at the same time. The speech and music volume levels are controlled completely separately so one doesn't drown out the other. I will tell you that I was completely blown away by the stereo separation. I mean plug a good pair of ear buds or even a top quality pair of headphones in, and it rivals many of the mp3 players on the market. Lately, I've enjoyed taking the audio portions of DVS movies with me when I travel and watching/listening to a movie whenever and wherever I feel like it. Who c ares if the particular flight doesn't have in-flight entertainment, I bring my own. I've also been enjoying sitting on the patio in the morning and listening to the NPR program stream while being totally wireless. The "Teckies" on the list are going to love the improved connectivity options. Active Sync via USB is a much faster option. Keysync was so fast, in fact, that the first time I linked and synced, I thought something was wrong. The process took about 1 third of the time it usually takes over the serial port. Connectivity with the rest of my home network has been wonderful. I have a MAC filtered, 128 bit WEP encrypted wireless network here and the MPower connects up to it, faster than some of my regular PC's. I've been able to wander out to the far edges of our property At times, well over 150 feet away from the router), and still had an excellent and very stable connection. So, even without the hard drive connected, I was linked right back to the music library on my main PC and was able to enjoy music while working outside. The paralelle port is gone, but its replacement by USB ports is a welcome one. I can tell you that being part of Humanware's beta process was really enlightening. Their response to us (Sometimes in the middle of their night) was nothing short of amazing. I've never worked so hard on a beta in my life, but the results are certainly worth all the efforts. The final word is that if you've enjoyed your BrailleNoteVoiceNote, You're absolutely going to be blown away by the MPower. I think you can tell that I am. Sadly, I'll be putting this Beta unit back in its box in the next couple of days and sending it home. However, count on the fact that my check for upgrading my old VoiceNote will be right behind it. Thanks for reading my review and if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them on or off list. Jeff Molzow [EMAIL PROTECTED]
