I do agree with the below message, but with a caveat. The Braillenote is not, I repeat not a personal computer. It will never duplicate completely the functionality that can be found on a Personal Computer. It will never do, in other words everything as fast and as well as a PC. Personally, I think text adventure games and an FM radio are fluff. They're cute, but not necessary. I would rather have seen greater Word support and a rewrite of the file manager. But, I'm in the minority on this one and that's ok. All I'm saying is, though I would like to see some improvements in the same areas as the writer of the message shown below, I don't expect the Braillenote to be able to completely eliminate the need for a PC. To be fair, no sighted person's PDA has done that, none of the competing products do that, and none of them make such claims.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Lange Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 2:58 PM To: Braillenote List Subject: [Braillenote] A Call for Better Keyword Support and other things Hi list and Humanware support staff, There are times when I have to vent and get something off my chest, and this is one of them. Today I encountered two problems with a Word document that I downloaded from the Project Assist web site in connection with a course that I'm taking. First, after downloading the document to my PC and transferring it to a BN Classic running Keysoft 6.11 build 26, I attempted to open the file in Keyword, at which time I got the "review options?" prompt. So far, so good, but when I pressed Enter on that prompt I was told that the file was not a recognized Word document. I re-saved the file on the PC as a Word 97 file, transferred that one, opened it and it worked fine. As it turns out, I couldn't open the original file until I did a 1-2-3 reset, then all was well. However, that led to a second problem. The Word file in question contained a number of web addresses which I needed to visit in order to complete a class assignment. Though I could see them quite clearly when viewing the Word file on the PC, they were omitted entirely from the document when viewing it in Keyweb. I was unaware that Keyweb wouldn't display embedded hyperlink fields in a Word document, so, frankly, I was a little surprised, and, a tad bit annoyed. My Braille Note is on its way back to me, having been upgraded to an MPower which should be running Keysoft 7, and I'm really excited about that. Having heard about all the neat functionality built into Keysoft 7 and the MPower platform, I can't wait to take the unit for a spin. However, I need to reiterate and expound on something that I've been saying for a long, long time. Humanware development managers have been very responsive to the needs and wants of the customers, and I extend a hearty thumbs-up for their efforts thus far to enhance the functionality of the product offering. Many folks, myself included, asked for a faster hardware platform and got it, a newer version of Windows CE and got it. Folks asked for enhanced media player support, streaming audio, database functionality, and the list goes on, and all of that is here now, and that's great! But what about the long-standing issues that still need to be addressed? Humanware needs to recognize and remember that there's a significant percentage of folks within the user population who, like myself, use the Braille Note for education and business as well as pleasure on a day-to-day basis, so special consideration must be given to ensuring that those applications that can be used for education and business have the best possible support that the platform will offer. This means that Keyword, for example, needs to be able to handle any Word document version that's thrown at it, and that in the interest of being fully and seamlessly integrated into education and business-related activity, it needs to, among other things, be able to handle fancier formatting such as tables without crashing and handle markup such as embedded hyperlinks without omitting the associated information. It also means that those memory glitches which cause critical documents to mysteriously disappear into the bit bucket need to be isolated and dealt with in no uncertain terms. Yeah, I ran across that one a couple of weeks ago and let me tell ya, folks, re-creating my data wasn't much fun. These issues still haven't been fully addressed in years, and it's become apparent that those of us who are concerned about them just haven't "made enough noise" by submitting formal requests to Humanware development or the support team. So I urge those who feel as I do, stand up and be counted. Voice your concerns on the list yet again, and write to Humanware support directly as I'm doing at this very moment, so that Humanware development managers can see the numbers and know that we're out here clamoring for resolution of these issues. Okay, time to get off my soapbox. No flames, please. See y'all later. Tom ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
