Rose, Greg said that he was sending the message on to
two different places for answers to the questions. He
stated that very clearly in his response back to Alex.
Diane and Pilot Sheba
God is my Light, and He makes my life worth living!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rose Combs" <[email protected]
To: "'Alex Hall'"
<[email protected]>,<[email protected]
Date sent: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:22:39 -0700
Subject: RE: [Braillenote] RE: BrailleNote frustrations
Am I the only one who noticed that not ***ONE***
question was actually
answered in the staff response?
In 2001 when I got my Braille note, in January, I sang
the praises of the
unit to anyone at all who would listen, and in fact, I
made a demo tape to
sent to a few friends and two of them bought their
Braille Notes based on
the demo I did. It was at that time the very best, bar
none piece of
equipment I had at the time.
Fast-forward to 2009 and what do I have, basically a
book reader, a clock
and calendar, and a calculator. I can write personal
notes in the word
processor and lists but I cannot print them in a good
format, I can't get
them to convert to Word 2007 or for that matter Word XP
without spending a
large chunk of time working on the files. I am unable
to sync my contacts
and calender with Outlook 2007 and I work in the real
world where we use the
product daily. I have a radio I never use, an address
book that has become
partially corrupted, a planner I can't sync, games I
seldom play, I'd favor
card games, like cribbage or poker over what we have.
I have other devices
to handle most media play lists, sounds etc, and I have
a computer that does
most things on the Internet in about four times the
speed.
Unless I hear some better news in the next year or so,
when my M-Power dies,
it dies and I will consider replacing it with something
else. I know many
blind people do not work, however, I do, and the things
that made the
Braille Note such a wonderful tool in 2001 have
undergone tremendous change,
and the Braille Note is not keeping up. My cell phone
does almost as much,
if I'd just settle down and learn how to use it,
unfortunately for me, its
qwerty keyboard is much too small for me to work with
easily or I would use
it for the calendar.
Wish I could connect my USB keyboard to the phone, then
I would not be so
unhappy about my calendar issues.
Rose Combs
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Alex Hall
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 12:36 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Braillenote] RE: BrailleNote frustrations
I sent a message to hw and wanted to share the response
from
them. You can read through my list of frustrations and
add your
own; send any to [email protected], as Greg says
below. Read
through his response to get my original message.
Have a great day,
Alex
---- Original Message ------
From: "HumanWare Technical Support"
<[email protected]
Subject: RE: BrailleNote frustrations
Date sent: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 12:28:51 -0400
Hello Alex
Let me first start by saying that we appreciate your
extremely
well done
compiled synopsis of the listers frustrations. As we
monitor the
list
we have developed a list of our own, but this is of
great help as
your
list was quite organized and to the point.
Having said that, because I do not have the answers to
all your
questions, I have sent this list to both the product
manager and
research and development for observation and response.
I
completely
understand your frustrations, and I can assure you that
even
though we
do not directly respond to listers's frustrations,
please know
that we
are monitoring the list, and are aware of the
different issues
people
are having. In return, I know that you can understand
that in
business
today, we cannot always give details of upcoming
features,
products or
issues, and we appreciate the patience and
understanding of the
users
because of this fact.
At Humanware, the Braille note has always been our most
widely
known,
and popular product. This has occured because of its
simplicity
of use,
and because we listen to our users. Please know that
we are
hearing
your frustrations. We appreciate your feed back,
especially when
it is
posted in this type of format, and we are always
looking to make
the
product better. The most effective way we can
continue to
improve the
product to the satisfaction of our users is to continue
to hear
your
constructive criticism and suggestions.
We developed the list to allow users to help each
other, and as
we have
said several times in the past, if you have suggestions
or
specific
issues that you would like heard, or assistance with,
please
send them
to [email protected]. This gives us the most
direct contact
with
our users and allows us to assist in the most
efficient way
possible.
Once again Alex, thank you for the well written list of
frustrations and
we appreciate your feedback.
Regards
Greg Stilson
Humanware Product And Support Specialist
www.humanware.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Hall [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 5:16 PM
To: us.info; HumanWare Technical Support
Subject: BrailleNote frustrations
Hello,
I am sending this to both tech support and the general
info
addresses in hopes that someone will be able to respond
to all of
the below concerns with straight answers. If anyone at
Humanware
is monitoring the Braillenote discussion list, you will
no doubt
recognize many of these. I repeat them here since they
have not
been answered to the satisfaction of most active
members on that
list.
1. Why will KeyChat, a feature years in the making,
not connect
to any of the most common instant messenger networks,
namely
Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, and AIM?
2. Why is it that the BrailleNote, advertised
primarily as a
device to "empower customers", still has so many
wordprocessor
problems? I do not refer only to the lack of Microsoft
Word
support, but also the erasing of data after format
markers (in
braille shown as dollar sign f), the erasing of some
RTF files,
leaving no text except an English language indicator,
the lack of
support for complex formatting such as tables or
images, the
complete inability to use any of the "rich formatting
features"
(line spacing, fonts, indents, and so on which are not
kept when
moving, translating, or printing a document, so what
good are
they?) All of these are very well-known issues, yet
they have
never been addressed, though in all fairness I have to
say that
the RTF problem seems to have come about as of ks7.5.x.
3. Why no Windows CE upgrade? There are so many
advantages to
this: PDF support, bluetooth audio and file transfers,
multi-tasking... In case you had not noticed, the bn
is the one
notetaker running a version ofCE that was new six years
ago; the
rest have CE5.x, not 4.2. I have heard the reason
about it being
a lot of work, but if HW felt it important enough, I
would think
they would be on it, not just putting it off over and
over and
blaming its unexistence on too much work. That seems
like a
rather flimsy excuse, considering that the dev team is
there to
work on ks, not to say that a project is too hard, so
they will
not do it.
4. Has any thought been given to the problem of file
sharing
over networks? This was a big selling point for ks6,
but with
Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7, it means
NOTHING! The
bn can no longer connect to a shared folder on these
operating
systems, so browsing networks now helps me not at all.
The above
mention of bluetooth object exchange would at least
partially
help in this area, but that is also not happening.
5. What about keymail? No message filters for blocking
senders'
addresses or domains, no rules for sorting messages, no
conversation grouping, no incorperation of RSS, and I
still have
that little problem of my bn adding random characters
to the end
of email addresses when I send messages. I still have
to
manually free database space, I still cannot open media
files or
web pages from keymail's attachment manager, there is
no way to
sort messages into folders depending on which account I
used to
download them, my signature is added multiple times if
I switch
out of and then back into a message I am writing, and,
thanks to
this new Ambicom wl54G card, I still get errors for no
reason and
have to either reset or wait five minutes before trying
again,
and it will then usually connect, not to mention the
long waits
to disconnect from my pop server. All this, and I
still cannot
even save an email somewhere else. Sure I can store
the text,
but what about when I want to forward the message or
reply to it?
What if I want to look at the headers... Wait, Keymail
does not
let me examine email headers! Do not even get me
started on html
emails or clicking links in email messages...
6. Keyweb... A great program back in ks6.x, but now
slow and
not able to support increasingly common html tags. If
I am on a
site with any dhtml (where the text changes without
reloading the
page) I am out of luck. If I want to click an object
that is not
a link or input control, such as in Google Calendar, I
cannot do
so. If a webpage counts my characters as I type to
ensure I do
not go over a limit or does something as I scroll
through a
listbox (both using the Javascript onChange event) then
I am left
out. Can I stream audio? Yes, sort of. If a file is
too big,
and I am still not sure how this is determined, then I
cannot do
so, even if I have plenty of room on my flash disk. If
I want to
spellcheck something I just wrote in a text box, I can
do so, but
replacing misspelled words is up to me; the bn will not
do it
automatically like it does in the wordprocessor.
Finally,
dialogs that ask for input are poorly supported; they
are
useable, but not very. Why can these not be translated
into
keysoft-like menus instead?
6. The media player has always been pretty good, and
playlists
are nice. However, it will still not save your place
in a file,
will not let you jump by seconds instead of
percentages, and you
can still not play songs in a random order. There is
much more I
could say, but it would be my own wants, not features
that I feel
are important to the bn.
7. The calculator is one of the best I have seen;
scientific,
fractions, and stats all make it very useful. However,
there is
still no unit converter, base converter, DMS function,
or a way
of editing a calculation with a cursor.
8. Keybook workswell, thoughI still cannot set my
default code
to UEB for brf files, and DAISY hardly works at all.
It is slow,
and my position is never saved.
9. On the subject of user surveys: how are these
performed? I
have never heard of any being conducted, yet I have
heard of two
after the fact that have impacted me. One was about an
SDK (the
ability to write programs for the bn family using
software
provided by HW). Apparently, users were asked why they
wanted an
SDK, and most said that it would be for games, so no
SDK was
made. The second was about the forced switch to
Eloquence inside
keybook; I hate Eloquence on the bn since it sounds
like every
few words are an entire sentence (imagine how choppy
that makes
things sound), it is set at a different rate, and it is
much
slower to respond in general than KNG. Regarding the
SDK, I
would love to have one of these so that I could make
some of the
changes mentioned above, and games are not a bad thing;
think
about how the bn would seem if it were the only one to
offer
basic card games, just like Windows, right out of the
box, not to
mention all the other apps users could make. As far as
the
second survey, I think it isobvious that I do not like
Eloquence
on the bn, and would not like to have to read my books
with it
instead of KNG. These surveys should be publicized;
sent to the
bn list, announced on the bnannounce list, posted on
the hw
website, and so on. What good is a user survey if
users do not
know about it????
Thank you for your time. For all of my above comments,
I still
love my bnmp, but it just keeps falling further behind.
TheBook
Sense can read Word2007 files, which seems to indicate
that
theBraille/Voice Sense notetakers will not be far
behind; they
can already talk to MSN, move items over bluetooth, and
I will
not even go into the hardware upgrades that the bn
would have to
undergo to even catch up. I think the main point with
many on
the bn list is that hw seems very unresponsive; we keep
sending
suggestions and bug reports, and we mostly get either
silence or
a generic "thank you; this has been sent to the
development
team." Great, but for something that was sent to the
dev team
years ago, these features sure are a long time in
coming! More
detail would help since it would not only tell us what
is really
going on with the features we have been asking for for
years, it
would also make it seem that HW is actually interested
in their
customers, which is not the case at the moment. As I
said in the
beginning of this message: some straight answers, even
if it is
"we have scrapped such and such an idea" would be
immensely
appreciated. Thanks again for reading.
Have a great day,
Alex, sn42074
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