[nabs] Change in plans for this month's student connection.

Mon Sep 5 19:09:24 EDT 2011

Tyler,
Wow, I had a braille n speak for years before I got my other notetaker with a braille display before college.
You must like playing with mechanics to take apart the thing. I’m shocked that the 
five-cell battery is really a group of 
double A batteries!  
I recharged that braille n speak many times, and wow, I was really just recharging  double A batteries!
I agree that our technology is overpriced. But for me I’m glad my VR counselor purchased the braille note and I am saving money to upgrade and buy the Apex. Why the apex? Well, my braille Note mPower’s  days are numbered as its old.
I feel the portability, ease of use, braille display and perkins style keyboard are great. For me, a mainstream product with a standard keyboard just doesn’t seem as efficient for me. I love braille and for me braille is much faster to read and write with.
So I will try and buy the next braille notetaker, even though its overpriced.

Ashley

From: Littlefield, Tyler 
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2011 3:21 PM
To: chase.crispin at gmail.com ; Discussion list for NABS,National Alliance of Blind Students. 
Subject: Re: [nabs] Change in plans for this month's student connection.

I don't know if this is the place to answer this, but you prompted this essay with the question "What's wrong with notetakers?"

First, Notetakers have always been over priced. For example, I just took apart an old Braille N' Speak the other day just to see what was in it. The bottom of the case says "five-cell battery," so I was looking for this 5-cell battery. It turns out that they meant it quite literally; the battery is a grouping of double-a rechargeable batteries, something you can get at wallmart for cheap. The difference here is that they encased four of the batteries in a sort of plastic with presumably some sauder between or something to keep them tightly connected, and they ran a wire from the positive and negative ends to another battery. So in short, it was basically a grouping of 5 double a rechargeable batteries that anyone with at least a bit of electronics knowledge could've made for $20, including wire and all, maybe a bit more.
The speaker would've cost maybe $2.5, at the most, and the motherboard with the processor would've been fairly cheap. So what's the price for this thing? $500 still, and this is more than a decade old.

Now, lets move on to the current notetakers. Lets start with the braille plus. When I looked at this, it was over $5000 with the accessories and docking station included. So what are you paying for. From what I remember, it was running USB 1.0 (that was the cool thing back in 2000 or so), a cheap processor, and barely had enough ram to get by on. My netbook I bought for $300 has way better hardware, and is less than 10% of the cost.

Lets look at how it's made. The developers used Python for the main core of this thing, which means that everything is running slower than it could because not only are they using an interpreted language, but they're using it on top of hardware that people thought was cool pre Y2K. They wrote this on top of a modified Linux OS, which means that they didn't even design the OS, and they want $5000 for it?

The braille note:
Looking at the voice note, since I don't want to get in to the topic of braille displays, the apex is just over $2000, with the option to save $100. Now, lets look at the hardware specs on this thing. 8 gb storage. Yes, you read that right. Most laptops under $1k are coming with upwards of 250 gb harddrives, but you get 8 gb. How does that work out? 256 MB ram. Wow, that is amazing, again most computers come with 4 gb or more. They boast the windows operating system, but they plastered a shell over the top of it, so that end-users can't develop for the Windos OS, but they have to use their API which is hard to get to write programs for the braille note. Now I understand that computers have more space, but lets look at this for a second. Even the overly-priced IPhones at retail value are better than the braille note's specs, and they cost around $900 or so.

The blind market is flooded with extremely over priced products, whose specs and features can't compensate for the outragious prices we are charged. Companies can give out hardware that was big back in 2000, and the corporate and government sektors are still going to buy these things up for their students, because as of now we don't really have anything better. Granted now we have the IPhone and the android is coming up, which I find awesome; I'm tired of using pre-historic hardware and having to take out what some people paid for their first car to pay for it. I hope that in the future IPhone and droid will become more popular and hopefully eclipse the notetaker market.
On 9/4/2011 11:18 AM, Chase Crispin wrote: 
  Hi All, 
  There has been a change of plans for this month's Student Connection.  As you may recall, I was going to do a show on access to educational materials.  For various reasons, that show has been postponed until October.  This month, I will be airing a segment from Main Menu about note takers.  What are the options out there?  What is wrong with the options out there now?  What can and can't we do with Mainstream technology?  Where and why is specialized technology needed?  Where do we see specialized and mainstream devices going in the future?  

  I realize that this is the second show that I have rebroadcast content on, and I do not plan on doing this often at all.  I hope you will all accept my apology for this show.  This piece on note takers has some very valuable information, especially for students, so I hope you will tune in and give it a listen.  If you have any thoughts on note takers, I would love to hear from you!  Feel free to share with me what technology you do and don't use in school,  what you can't do with what you have, any thoughts on this topic can be shared with me and I will briefly talk about this in the October show.  Beings the show on access to materials has been postponed until next month, you still have plenty of time to send me your thoughts, questions, suggestions, and stories about access to educational materials.  I would really like to hear some stories of how you get around barriers and get access to your materials.  What sources do you use?  What challenges do you still face?  I will go through all the feedback that I receive on the air, and bring up some of your opinions, thoughts, and questions with the guests on next month's show.  

  You can send in feedback about note takers and technology in school, thoughts, questions, and stories about access to educational materials, and any feedback about The Student Connection to me at this email address: 
  chase at acbradio.org 

  Please note that the Student Connection comment line expired.  I will send a new number to this list soon. 

  The Student Connection is a one hour monthly show focusing on issues and challenges facing students who are blind or visually impaired.  If you are a student, a teacher, a parent of a VI student, anyone else who works with students with a visual impairment, or even an adult past your school days, you are always welcome to tune in.  You can hear The Student Connection on ACB Radio Mainstream starting at 8 PM Eastern, 7 PM central, 6 PM Mountain, 5 PM pacific on Tuesdays, which is 0:00 UTC on Wednesdays.  A new episode of The Student Connection goes to air on the first Tuesday of every month.  The Student Connection reairs every Tuesday for the rest of the month in the same time slot, and repeats every 4 hours for the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday.  You can find archives of the show on the ACB Radio Public FTP site at: 
  ftp://ftp.acbradio.org 
  Click on the ACB Radio Archives folder, and then The Student Connection folder.  In that folder you will find all archives of the show. 

  Thanks for your support of the show, and I look forward to having you tune in starting this Tuesday at 8 PM eastern to hear all about note takers!  

  Have a great labor day! 

  Chase Crispin 
  Host and producer, The Student Connection. 
  http://www.acbradio.org/mainstream 

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Take care,
Ty
my website:
http://tds-solutions.net
my blog:
http://tds-solutions.net/blog
skype: st8amnd127
My programs don't have bugs; they're randomly added features!

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