Hi folks,
After being here for about five years now (getting help and
giving back to the community), I noticed that we tend to post the
below questions and have huge debates on it - ranging from
outright attack to unnecessary words. The below three questions
(dubbed "top three") are but on personal observations of both
questions and its answers (which I do apreciate):
1. When would the next upgrade come out and what features would
be included? In my opinion, this is by far the most debated
question and bound to produce wide range of opinions. Even
though this question has many forms, including adding comparison
to other products and as a reminder of what HumanWare has said
before, the basic question outlines frustrations that users have
over the worthiness of the company's communication strategy and
need to stay current in technology. My only opinion and answer
is that it takes time to even design ways of implementing our
suggestions, write it in English, then transform it into
something that BrailleNote can understand, and finally,
communicating what the engineers have done in simple language so
that the populus can take a look at it. As a programming student
myself with interests in assistive technology and embedded
systems such as BrailleNote, I do know it takes even days to
formulate simple homework problems (at least in the beginning)
and hours on deciding which tool should I use for implementing
your suggestions for my own programs. At this stage of college
life (I'm technically a junior now), my programs are about two to
three hundred lines long which performs somewhat complicated task
based on assignment specs. What if I and other programming
people on this list (Alex in particular) were asked by you (even
by ourselves) to design a new feature for our own programs. How
long do we think it'll take us from getting your suggestions to
production? I'd roughly say close to a month or two. Now imagine
this process on a grand scale and on a large software suite as
KeySoft with thousands of lines of code. I'm sure you'll get the
idea - it takes months. Also designing what features to be
included is something that does take time, particularly if we are
dealing with a device which shows signs of not using a lot of its
resources for now. Surely we (and HumanWare) would not want to
add features that uses lots of space and runs slower, right? In
summary, my only answer to our top question is, "please
understand the other side of the river."
2. How's BrailleNote compared to other devices? This question
appears around convention time and during early months -
particularly in March when there are bound to be new product
annncements. I personally feel that occasional comparison email
is fine (about once or twice a year), but excessive comparison
arguments would, in my opinion, add little value and may produce
"worthless" comments. (because of personal issues, I won't go
into details of "wccrthless" comments.) I know that recent news
would trigger yet another comparison here (for more details,
please consult what the other guys are saying). Also, product
comparison could mean circulation of misinformation at times - I
just read a website claiming that Apex uses Intel Atom processors
and is best compared to a netbook. This is partly true -
although the high-end embedded systems are apprroaching the specs
of a small netbook, the underlying technologies makes it clear
that BrailleNote uses ARM CPU and does not support netbook
applications. Thus, my only word is this: be careful on what you
are posting about comparisons.
3. Is my unit's problem caused by KeySoft or not? This is one of
those questions that newbies ask, and answers to this kind of
questions that really sets apart experts from others (sorry for
this differentiation). Not every problem on the BrailleNote is
caused by KeySoft. If something in KeySoft does not work well,
or if the speech goes funny or a correct grade of braille is not
shown (or others), it's definitely something to do with one or
more settings under Options Menu. However, problems such as
memory getting low, slow responses under KeyWeb (Internet
Explorer) and others are not KeySoft's fault - rather, it's the
operating system that's to blame. In some rare instances
(particularly more prominent in Apex now), it's the combination
of KeySoft, operating system and hardware that's to blame. For
instance, the problem of computer braille showing up when reading
text document when you want contracted braille is a KeySoft
setting problem; getting a slow response when using KeyWeb and
Eloquence together on an mPower is an operating system issue; A
device not being recognized is a hardware problem (mostly
software though); but using slower program on fast hardware and
the operating system not keeping a close eye on this program is
both software and hardware problem (such is the case with
numerous issues with the Apex; essentially, KeySoft 9 is Apex
version of KeySoft 8). In short, my only answer at this point
would be, "what if we observe the problem further?" That way,
we'd figure out if the problem came from KeySoft, something else
or both.
My apologies for any harsh comments that I might've used here.
Hope it was helpful.
Sincerely,
Joseph S. Lee (UC Riverside)
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