Good points, Joseph. I've noticed that myself being on here for
not even a year yet.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Welty" <[email protected]
To: "Joseph Lee" <[email protected]>,"BrailleNote List"
<[email protected]
Date sent: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 10:35:47 -0400
Subject: Re: [Braillenote] Personal observation: the top three
questions onthislist...
I have to agree on all three of these points. it's what I've
always been
telling others about this, and I remember myself being attacked
for blindly
following humanware for saying it before.
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Joseph Lee" <[email protected]
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 05:38
To: "BrailleNote List" <[email protected]
Subject: [Braillenote] Personal observation: the top three
questions on
thislist...
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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