Hello HumanWare Headquarters Staff,
I'm curious to know when the production people and engineers
at Humanware will do anything to enable our devices to continue
sending and receiving E-Mail and surfing the internet. I've been
reading, with a growing sense of doom, that A T and-T and
several of the other ISP's will be doing something to enhance
on-line security for their subscribers who use personal
computers. However, these companies are not aware of KeySoft ce,
which is our operating system, so it seems as if this move by the
ISP's will destroy most of our devices ability to send and
receive E-Mail or go to the internet. .
Many of us use our very expensive notetakers for work and
school, in addition to corresponding with friends and family.
Hopefully you and the headquarters staff at HumanWare is
cognizant of the fact that many of your customers neither own nor
use personal computers, and for whatever reason has no intention
of purchasing one.
At a difference of about fifty-five hundred dollars between a
very powerful laptop and a thirty-two cell BrailleNote, I would
be more than five thousand dollars richer had I wanted a computer
with JAWS or Window Eyes. I know that my little BrailleNote is
not as powerful as a desktop, laptop, or notebook computer, but
for the more than eight thousand US dollars I've put into it
because I don't know how to use what the rest of the world calls
a real computer, I'd appreciate it doing the things it did when I
first purchased it plus most of the features transplanting it to
an MPower allows it to do. At seventy-three years of age, I have
no interest in a low quality FM radio or in reality games, and
see no need for them, but I don't complain about them because I
don't have to use them. With that said however, I do enjoy
exchanging mail with friends and family and attending classes
using my BrailleNote. Twelve years ago when I started to lose my
vision, I immediately learned Braille. Then, in 2003 I heard
about the BrailleNote which would allow me to maintain contact
with friends and family, now that my vision was completely gone.
A friend who is also blind and sympathized with me suggested that
I get a BrailleNote, which I did, purchasing the one with the
thirty-two cell display. It was a keysoft 5.2 and suddenly I was
in the twenty-first century with most of the rest of the world.
Since that time, I've spent approximately three thousand dollars
to give it all its upgrades, transplant it to an MPower, and get
it the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus that I thought it and I
needed. Now, I'm waiting for some young, bright, enthusiastic
HumanWare person to do whatever is necessary to give us a good
encyclopedia. However, I and all users who don't make their
device an appendage to a computer, know that our very expensive
little device will become as extinct as the DODO bird if we can
only use it the way people use old manual typewriters today.
Please get the staff busy working to make our devices continue
receiving and sending mail and surfing the internet. We already
know that it does not have the speed or storage capacity of its
larger brothers and sisters used mainly by the sighted community,
but we are satisfied with them most of the time.
Thank you for reading my complaint. I do have another one
about my device not being able to send long messages or multiple
attachments. However, as much as that peeves me, it's minor
compared with the possibility of not being able to use E-Mail or
to continue learning to explore the internet.
Sincerely,
Sammie d. Clay
phone: 202-863-0390 USA.
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