Hi Grant,
Nice to hear about your BrailleNote. Having evaluated the
"previous notetaker" myself, I agree with your assessment of
BrailleNote - its superior braille yet improvements for MS Word
support is the priority. In case you (or others) didn't know, I
created a website where I put a lot of useful articles of
intthest for BrailleNote users. It is called BrailleNote PBWiki
and can be reached by: braillenote.pbwiki.com. I haven't updated
the content in a long time because I was studying for AP exams -
now it is almost over, I can't wait to put new information up on
the site, which will include complete hardware compatibility list
(found under HumanWare's site with some personal notes) as well
as a detailed article on history of BrailleNote from 2000 to
present (I need help on this, please).
Cheers,
Joseph
----- Original Message -----
From: Grant Hardy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Date sent: Wed, 07 May 2008 14:07:36 -0700
Subject: [Braillenote] Initial BrailleNote Impressions
Hello All:
Last Friday, I received my shiny new BrailleNote mPower.
I'd like to take a moment to give you my initial impressions of
this notetaker, if you're interested. Before I do so, though, I
would like to say that I have found it far superior to the
notetaker I was previously using. Its responsiveness, braille
support, ease of use, multilingual support, and documentation are
all far better than my previous notetaking device.
I have just a few observations, however.
The BrailleNote's Microsoft Word support really needs some work -
in fact, I would say that improving the support for Microsoft
Word files within the next release of KeySoft is absolutely
essential. To my horror, I was unable to open a simple Rich Text
file produced with Microsoft Word (and thus, containing MS Word
tags) from which I needed to give a presentation, today;
consequently I had to rush to a computer to save it in plain
text. This is unfortunate.
Aside from the flaws with Microsoft Word files, I find KeyWord to
be a pleasure to work with: I love being able to deal with a
multi-level directory structure right within KeyWord, and I find
KeyWord's braille translation and formatting features to be
excellent - though it would be good to have the option of setting
a specific font type and size in addition to the style.
I was disheartened to see the inaccessible registration scheme
that Humanware has put into place. I received a print
registration card and had to get a sighted person to fill it out
for me - isn't this ironic? It actually creates a rather bad
initial impression!
The BrailleNote plays far more streams than my previous notetaker
could handle, though there are still some which clearly should
play that produce errors. Here is an example.
http://scfire-nyk-aa02.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1074
(I should note that I've written to Humanware's technical support
regarding this issue and have gotten no response within three
days.)
A disappointment was the FM Radio. Its reception makes using the
radio hardly worth it.
On the plus side, though, I've very much enjoyed the
memo-recording functionality that's present in the BrailleNote.
There are just enough settings to give me all the control that I
could want!
KeyWeb should have a setting to separate links onto their own
lines, and a few websites I've tried don't work properly in
KeyWeb, but aside from that, I like it a lot.
So, while the BrailleNote needs some work, and the registration
procedure needs a facelift, I still like it enormously. I shall
share more in the future!
Cheers,
Grant
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