Hi Tim and list,
Using conventional hard drives on the BN... Hmm, a very good
question...
Well, hard drives, flash drives and optical media are "disks."
(In terms of optical media, it is actually a disc.) A disk is
essentially a hardware which stores information, grouping them in
files (a collection of data) and folders (a collection of files).
Any medium that a computer can interact and store data would be a
disk - CompactFlash, Flash Disk, hard disks, virtual DVD drives
and even part of physical (primary) memory (RAM).
BrailleNotes have "disks" - not a hard drive, but a special kind
of disk called flash (which works differently than a hard drive).
For computers like BrailleNote, putting a hard drive means more
power usage, which translates to shorter battery life and being
pron to loss of data (if something goes wrong with the hard
drive). Also, hard drives are SO slower than flash memory, and
for notetakers which needs fast response and almost instantaneous
power on and off, devices like BN uses flash.
As for my remark on using RAM as though it was a drive, it is
done so that we can get extremely fast response from our
notetakers. RAM is faster than flash, and flash is even faster
than hard drives. The so-called "RAM Disk" is achieved by
partitioning (or setting up) a part of physical memory as though
it is some kind of a disk (this is the story behind the existence
of KeySoft System Disk). But using RAM as primary storage for
users has one huge drawback: RAM is volatile - loses its data
when the computer is off. Therefore, people usually use Flash or
other disks to store data and use RAM for running programs (which
holds both program code and the data that it needs).
Any other questions? (I'll pass the mic to other guys so that
they can answer other questions... I don't want all the credit,
I just want to share it with others...).
Hope this helps. Let me know if you were able to understand it.
Cheers,
Joseph (UCR)
----- Original Message -----
From: Timothy Clark <[email protected]
To: Joseph Lee <[email protected]
Date sent: Sun, 30 May 2010 23:43:43 -0400
Subject: Re: [Braillenote] PBWorks: an inspiration for an
article...
why can't they put a basic hard drive in all braillenotes instead
of disks?
Timothy
On 5/30/10, Joseph Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi folks, particularly newbies,
I'd like to thank Timothy for his questions - which gave me an
inspiration to write the following outline for a small article:
Title: What can you d/cannot do with a BrailleNote?
Well, basically the idea here is to answer a few questions about
what BrailleNote can do and what it cannot do (just to clarify
few things). So, I'd like to ask that, if you have any
questions
about the BrailleNote which pertain to what it can do or cannot,
then I'd be appreciated.
Some of the common questions and common answers are:
* Can you run programs: Somewhat. There are ways of writing
programs for a BrailleNote; what we need is an SDK (Software
Development Kit).
* Flash videos: No (mostly because the operating system and
memory issues).
* Voice chats: Not exactly, but based on DBC (Deaf-Blind
Communicator) specs, I think it'd be possible.
And so on and on.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Joseph
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--
Timothy Clark, WTCN Owner and Maniger
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