Hi Beth,
I have a couple of questions. Who was criticizing people for choosing the
BrailleNote and not the PACMate, or for choosing the PACMate and not the
BrailleNote? Why is it so hard to get one's point across, and yet people like
you say we should try to understand where each person is coming from? Never
mind, I think I will not get the answer to those questions anyway.
What I most agree with in your post, Beth, is that PDI accepts what we have
to say on this list, whether good or bad. It's the fanatic and stubborn list
member who is having problems listening to observations of other users when
they find them negative to their taste, and it does not matter anymore if the
observations were repeatedly explained to be made in order to show PDI and
users what some of us feel is lacking, what we hope should be worked on in a
reasonable time, and what consequences some of us are willing to take--like
GUI--in exchange for an improved product.
I apologize for stepping on the toes of the sensitive BrailleNote user.
Also, I said the part about the BrailleNote will soon be limited to the people
with simple computer needs and basic computer skills because of the philosophy
that blind people should be spared from grappling with graphical user
interface, even if it means slower development of the BrailleNote because they
have to write KeySoft applications than just adopt Pocket PC or whatever will
give more flexibility. Neither did I say that PACMate users are power users, I
do not know where you got that crazy idea. But if the BrailleNote cannot catch
up in terms of what it can offer to the user, then two blind people on exactly
the same job but one is using the PACMate and the other a BrailleNote will have
marked differences in how they do their job. They may have the same output,
but the one using the more powerful product will have an easier time.
Take Dan's case. If his job requires that he deals with HTML messages, and
let's assume that there was another blind person with the same job but using a
PACMate, then that other blind person will finish reading the HTML messages
while Dan is still saving them to KeyWord files so that he can open them in
KeyWeb and read them properly. Is this a comparison of the BrailleNote and the
PACMate? Yes, but that's not all there is to it. You must understand that the
point here is that PDI needs to do something about this because since it is not
easy to switch from one PDA to another, the BrailleNote user will somehow
expect--and we do based on our feature requests and suggestions--that our
urgent needs be met somehow.
Tired of repeating herself,
Kirstyn
