Hi Sharon and list, I understand where Sharon is going; I'm 90% confident that this post arose thanks to many suggestions and complaints that this list has received. Here's my own educated guess on what's going on: * Based on rules of economics, this assistive tech industry is not a perfect competition nor a pure monopoly. Rather, this is a monopolistic competition. A typical characteristic or a monopolistic competition is many companies with many differentiated products - in other words, companies would produce different products to appeal to buyers. In this case, we have four companies - Freedom Scientific, GW Micro, HumanWare and Levelstar, with each producers selling different devices - PAC Mate, Braille Sense/BS Plus, BrailleNote and Icon/Braille Plus. Each company has its goals and "secrets" which makes them competetive. For instance, where as FS uses "mainstream integration" by utilizing screen reading technology, HumanWare uses its own software interface even though both companies uses some form or version of Windows CE underneath. Another characteristic that arises due to product differentiation is the tendency for monopolistic competetive firms to keep details of future development to minimum or not announce at all until the release. This has two effects: A. To play with psychological response of the users - in other words, keep the users quiet about the product release to make them think that the company is doing nothing - except that there's something going on. In the end, when the announcement is made, the users would be shocked to find out that the firm was indeed listening to them. In our case, there is evidence of increased HW present, which may (but not always) indicate the HW is listening to the users. B. To thwart competition - if a company finds out what another firm is doing, then what will it do? An obvious ansewr is, "copy it and make it more elaborate and more friendly than the other company." That's what happened with some mainstream companies. In our case, this "lack of communication regarding new features" from HW could mean one thing: to keep competition out of reach of what will be included in the next version of KeySoft. * Another thing to consider would be scarcity of resources. In other words, not enough labor, land, capital or any other resources are limited. This means that, even though HW wanted to add many features for end users, lack of funding or allocation of labor (hiring programmers, managing tech support staff, etc.) may inpeed the development of new ideas. A notable claim (from what I've heard fromPresident of hardware at FS, who all we know) is that some programmers left HW office in NewZealand, which may indicate that there might have been some allocation of resources such as employees, computers and buildings,etc., and this may have caused this "delay" and lack of communication to happen in the first place. These are just my educated guesses. I didn't say that I know everything - its just my guess, that's all. I am aware ofcompetition (I followed PM from its beginnings and I've used Braille Sense (the Korean version) before). So I understand about comparisons and how companies use different approaches to attract buyers - mainstream integration (Fs), cutting edge through alternative textual software interface (HW), textual interface plus immitating graphical interface (GW Micro) and an alternative operating system (Levelstar). So my opinion is this: it is somewhat risky, after all. In other words, this kind of thing is somewhat sensitive - some people may be offended by it while some people may use this discussion to create a fallacy just because of complaints by some people. To conclude this, I'd like to give you the "technical reality" - possibilities for HumanWare thanks to what others are using: * As you have noticed, the operating system of Braille Sense Plus is Windows CE 5, which is inferior to Windows Mobile 6. * PAC Mate does not run under CE 6 - it is Mobile 6 with CE 5.2, which has been superseeded by Windows Mobile 6.1. * We won't know about the effectiveness of Linux on a portable notetaker until many users uses it in real life situations and pushes Braille Plus beyond its limits. * For HW, this is an excellent opportunity - by upgrading to latest CE version, we can say that BrailleNote is superior to other devices (more up to date than PM). This would open the door for less memory related errors, running more programs than competition can, and support for things such as WPA2, Bluetooth 2.0, IEEE 802.11 G, N, I, E and other security algorithms as well as better compatibility with WindowsVista. That's all I can "spill" i.e. think of at the moment. I apologize if my post has offended some people here. I also apologize if my wording was harsh. Next time, I'll try to restrict myself. Anyway, hope this post was informative and detailed. Cheers, Joseph
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sharon Campbell Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 2:27 PM To: JD Townsend; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: [Braillenote] Product Comparisons Hi List, Here is a comparison on the so-called competition we really need to take into account. Did You Know??? If you're trying to read something as simple as the TV Land schedule that both Sense Products from GW Micro, and the BraillePlus from the American Printing House allows easy access of times for the programs? Guess what, the BrailleNote doesn't give you this option, no matter what you do. Why is HumanWare falling behind? Just last weekend, the big talk was that HumanWare didn't want to give the "Competition" a heads up on what was coming. I'm sorry, but the more I see about what we don't have, and they do, if we had the money to go for the other product, I would. Certain people on this list talk about having patience. Well, where is it getting us? A long time ago, I started trouble because I talked about prices for the blindness products being so high. Guess what, they haven't come down. Why not make a product that all of us can enjoy. It's time to make our needs known. Living in the Present One day at a time, This is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past. For it is gone. And do not be troubled about the future. For it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful. That it will be worth remembering. web site samobile.net/users/smileycampbell ___ Replies to this message will go directly to the sender. If your reply would be useful to the list, please send a copy to the list as well. 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 No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.16/1427 - Release Date: 5/11/2008 1:08 PM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.16/1427 - Release Date: 5/11/2008 1:08 PM ___ Replies to this message will go directly to the sender. If your reply would be useful to the list, please send a copy to the list as well. 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
