Hi list.

Thank you Kevin for sending me the presentation. At first i had a few problems getting it, but i've finally managed listen to the whole thing.

I had high hopes for keyChat and i thought that would be for me, the highlight of the upgrade. But i'm not impressed with the fact that windows live (msn) is not supported. I mean, i don't know anyone who uses google talk or iChat. Everyone, who i know anyway, uses windows live as their instant messaging service. Does anyone know if facebook IM will work with this fancy protocol? That's probably the only way i'd be able to make use of keyChat seeing as windows live isn't supported. But i've a horrible feeling that a lot of us on this list have played a part in persuading hw to go with google talk. A lot of us use gmail addresses which means that hw probably thought that google talk was what we were all using and finding accessible. I bet if we all subscribed to the list with hotmail or yahoo addresses, hw may well have gone with the more closed approach of supporting windows live and yahoo! messengers. So now, all we can really do is hope that in a few years, windows live and yahoo! may start using this new "cutting edge" protocol called XMPP (at least i think that's what it's called anyway).

I don't usually have time to listen to audiobooks so i probably won't be using audible. All the other book reader improvements seem to be aimed at the US once again! Okay so audible and very limited bookshare content is available outside the US, but with me being in the UK, i do feel a bit left out.

I already have an HP printer which works fine with my bn. Admittedly, i lost count of the number of phone calls i had to make to tech support to get it all set up and working correctly.

All in all, the presentation was basically a repeat of the press release which came out a few weeks ago. The one slightly positive thing which doesn't affect me personally but may interest other users, is the build of ks7,5 (which includes the classic) that allows access to the new bookshare site. But even then, we don't know when that'll be released. We don't even know when ks8,0 will be released. Personally, i don't think they'll be releasing ks8,0 by the end of this month. Previously, hw had said it would be released in fall 2008, but did that ever happen? i think not!

Overall, i'm not impressed with this upgrade. I was hoping that the reason it was late was going to be because they were upgrading the OS, but i was wrong. Oh and i like hw's saying: "Our policy states that we cannot talk about future releases." Okay then, if you can't talk about future releases, then can you tell us why there was no OS upgrade in the CURRENT release (meaning ks8,0) and why after years of asking and needing features like better word support, we still haven't got them. The only reason why i'm thinking of upgrading is because you can't skip an upgrade so if hw do finally get their act together and bring out a decent upgrade in the future, i won't have to pay for all the upgrades i've missed.

There, rant over!

Blind Tech Mailing List Administrator

email: [email protected]

Zone BBS username: pocket_PC (ID 8332)

Braillenote mPower BT 32 user
version: keysoft 7,5 build 29

words of wisdom: technology: it's great when it works, but rubbish when it doesn't!

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