Hi,
Yet another one of those comparisons ag... Since there were
message about Braille Sense on oingr lists, I thought I would
answer quite a few things about Apex here:
* The thing above the SPACE on the BT is not technically
four-directional arrows. They are what's called Scroll Wheel and
works similar to Scroll buttons on the Braille Sense family. The
top button is ESC, the left is HOME, the right is END and the
bottom is CONTEXT (either contextual help or navigation modifier
between media file movements and file movements, including
webites). The CENTER is ENTER, and the whelord that surrounds
the CENTER is the actual scroll wheel (like a cell phone).
* The texture of the Apex feels somewhat like BrailleNote PK.
Think of it as an exjended version of Brailliant. Apex now uses
Baum cells with button-like touch cursors.
* The thumb-keys are about half the height from previous devices.
* Apex and Braille Sense Plus's CPU speed is the same - 520
Megahertz; the vendors are different - BSP uses INTEL (now
Marvell) X-Scale, which PAC Mate uses an older variant, and Apex
uses Freessale (a derivative from Motorola).
* The RAM Disk aportionment is different - BSP has 128 MB of RAM
and 18 MB of RAM Disk (for a total of 256, if my guess is right,
but it could be 64/64 for a total of 128); Apex has 256 MB RAM of
which about 200 is RAM and 32 is RAM Disk.
* The speed of folder and file access, as well as drive
information retrieval is way faster than an mPower - on par with
the BSP.
* Like BSP, Apex has 8 GB of Flash.
* The microphone for the Apex is positioned on the left end of
the display (and is still mono but way better than an mPower).
* The sound of the keyboard sounds like a conventional laptop (at
least from my testing).
Few things (rather hints...):
* It is possible to override startup sound under Apex.
* It is possible to format an SD card on the Apex (haven't
consulted the BSP user guide in Korean yet...).
* It is possible to play Tetris on the Apex, as well as display
the resources or debug messages from the BrailleNote.
Well, hope this gives you a picture here...
Cheers,
JL (University of California, Riverside)
P.S. Yes, I'm the "BN hacker" from the BN list... (not in a bad
way...)
If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, visit:
http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv
