Re: W.E. and Netbook PC's

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:30:43 -0800

When i bought my first computer, the person I bought it from asked me what I wanted to do with it. i think that 25 years later, this is still the most important question that either someone should ask you, or you should ask yourself. many people are psyched into buying a lot more computer power than they need for the tasks that they perform. many people only use their computer for Email, web browsing, and some word processing. just about any PC, even an old one, would suffice for these tasks. In this case, the netbook could be one's only computer, especially if you are cramped for space, such as a student living in a dorm room, a teen ager living with parents, or anyone who does not have much space. But there are a lot of folks out there who are more than willing to convince you that you need the latest and greatest. 

Andy
At 05:08 AM 1/28/2009, you wrote:

Ideally, the more resources you have to work with, the better, how-so- ever...

I ran window-eyes with dektalk speech more ore less happily on a
toshiba tecra 650 mhz machine with 128 mb ram and 20 gb 4200 rpm hard
drive.  I won't say it was totally comfortable, but it was definitely
workable considdering that I had nothing else.

Window-eyes 7 with dektalk speech should run comfortably on a netbook
as long as you don't stack scripts on it in droves, or try forcing it
to eloquence or digital speech.  Speech recognition would be too much
on top of window-eyes.  That's where the portability vs functionality
takes a serious hit.

The question is, what do you want to do?  If you want to check your
email and browse the web on a bus or in the car, or if you want to use
one of these computer based gps systems, or if you want a quick and
cheep notetaking machine, then netbooks are for you.  Well-built
netbooks get up to 8 hours battery life.  They're much lighter to cary
than laptops.  They're cheep, so if you really need this
functionality, you can probably justify the expense of a good quality
laptop or desktop system for home use, and a netbook for the road.
They are usefull as all get out for what they are, but I wouldn't sell
one as a desktop replacement for sure.

Best,


erik burggraaf

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On 27-Jan-09, at 10:03 AM, Chip Orange wrote:


Raul,

It helps some, but I thought they were say half the price of a laptop?
If that's the case, the one article I had read said they achieved this
price cut by giving you components that were slower, hotter, and a
screen that was smaller, dimmer, and lower resolution.

They implied, in the review article that did some testing, that
slowness
(of everything; bus speed, hard drive, and processor/memory, and a
processor without L2 cache), made for an experience where say, loading
MS Word was grindingly slow, but use of the web, where the server at
the
other end, and the speed of your internet connection were your
bottlenecks, would seem only slightly slower.

So, I'm looking for what even defines a "netbook", since the article
said it was a slower, but cheaper, notebook computer.

BTW, I talked to someone on the sales staff of GW, and he said the
Oqo,
what you might call a netbook, although an expensive one, was still
too
slow to run window eyes with synthetic speech, and a processor
intensive
application like speech recognition.  In his opinion, you needed a
full
high end laptop to run it all, and that's been my experience with a
high
end Dell laptop with a 2.2 ghz processor, loads of RAM and L2 cache,
that it bearly keeps up with the demand placed on it by window eyes
and
synthetic speech (and windows).  I've seen times when response time
isn't what you would call acceptible, and when I've removed window
eyes
and synthetic speech and had a sighted person try the same things,
it's
been ok.  This is why I respected his analysis that a screen reader
and
synthetic speech can place quite a load on a system themselves.

thanks.

Chip






------------------------------

Chip Orange
Database Administrator
Florida Public Service Commission

[email protected]
(850) 413-6314

(Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.)



-----Original Message-----
From: Raul A. Gallegos [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 4:31 PM
To: GW Info Discussion List
Subject: Re: W.E. and Netbook PC's

Chip. This is not my experience at all, and I have reviewed 4
different
netbooks. All in all, they all for the most part have;

* Atom 1.6 ghz processor
* 1 gb of ram
* 120 or 160 gb of hard drive space
* 3 or 6 cell battery
* built-in wireless
* onboard lan
* onboard camera
* Windows xp-home

Some have the added bluetooth support, a modem, and/or a few other
extras. In any case, since the hardware is about the same,
what it comes
down to is how you feel about its keyboard, its management of the
battery, its shape, size, and feel. While opening Word, Excel, or
Powerpoint, they work fine. While using Internet Explorer and/or
Firefox, they work fine. Not as fast and screeming as a
desktop pc with
far more power, but not as bad as one might think.

Hope this helps.

Chip Orange wrote the following on 1/26/2009 2:56 PM:

Hi Steve,

If you're doing it because of the cost, then you may want

to know that

system access is offering a "netbook" version of their

screen reader for

$150.  I don't know what's cut out to restrict it to netbooks.

Well, my impression of these devices is that their

processing capability

is very limited and slow; if you're using it for synthetic

speech, and

running a screen reader, and trying to do something like

run internet

explorer or ms word, I'd guess you'd better have some real patience.
I'm not an owner of one, but they have to get the cost down

somehow, and

I thought processor speed was one of the ways.

My preference, if money is not the only issue, would be to find the
screen size and resolution that's the cheapest for a given

line of high

performing laptops.  That's usually been the 14 inch ones

lately, but it

could be the 12 inch ones by now.

Then you shouldn't have any worries in adding a full-fledged screen
reader like window eyes, with synthetic speech.

Chip






------------------------------

Chip Orange
Database Administrator
Florida Public Service Commission

[email protected]
(850) 413-6314

(Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.)



-----Original Message-----
From: Steve "The Jazz Man" Bauer [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 1:56 PM
To: gw-info list
Subject: W.E. and Netbook PC's

I'm looking at possibly purchasing one of these new small Netbook
computers.

Samsung MC10 appears to be top on my list at this point.

Does W.E. run successfully on these small units?

Thanks.

Steve

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