Hi, Jo,
The BrailleSense Plus is a very nice machine. You can take notes with it,
you can edit the notes, you can easily transfer them to your laptop. The
keyboard is very quiet, quieter than a slate and stylus! You can view .txt,
.doc, .rtf files in contracted braille, uncontracted braille, or computer
braille on-the-fly.
I prefer a qwerty keyboard, but many people don't. One reason is that I can
type anything and I can view my writing in perfect contracted braille and a
sighted person, or someone without a notetaker, could read what I have
written in perfect text. When you write braille using the BSP or any
notetaker for that matter, you must be careful to write the braille so it
will translate into proper text. This means you must break some of the
rules and do some experimentation to make sure your braille will translate
correctly so a sighted person, or person without a notetaker, can read it.
One example is that you must add a letter sign to the initials SD if you
want them to appear as initials and not as the word said. I can write
either with the qwerty keyboard or in braille, and the keyboard will become
a braille style keyboard. The same thing can be done with a braille
keyboard: you can connect an external qwerty keyboard to a bt unit if you
want to use both types of keyboards.
One of the things I love is I can connect my BSP to my PC and the PC will
recognize it as a removable storage drive. No need to use ActiveSync.
I don't like the eloquence speech, but it's much clearer than the speech on
the Braille 'n Speaks.
The BSP is easy to learn and use, although I'm still getting used to it.
(My previous notetakers used Keysoft, and the commands were different.)
Since the BSP is menu driven, you can access the menu and navigate to the
command you're looking for. It's more user-friendly than a Windows PC.
I haven't used all of the features, just the word processor, media player,
file manager, scheduler and calculator.
Both the braille and qwerty keyboards have a one-handed mode, and I often
use that mode because some of the qwerty commands are on the same side of
the keyboard and the one-handed keyboard makes the function, control alt
acts like sticky keys, making it easier to press, for example control a.
The BSP also works well with WindowEyes as a braille display, although the
description for the qwerty hot keys needs to be improved.
You can read 8 dot braille, but writing 8 dot braille isn't supported.
There are several work-arounds for brailling capital letters in computer
braille. The BSP supports the computer braille code, which is a more
complex system than computer braille.
I hope my explanations have helped.
Terri Amateur Radio call sign KF6CA.
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