Hi Charles,

On 9 Feb 2005 at 17:18, Charles Pond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spoke, thus:

> In that sense, I'm not a big Windows fan.  The sense of PDH's ads is that
> the machines are Windows-ce based for users with the intrinsic benefits. If

Agreed, and yes.

> the machines do not focus on the user accessing Windows-ce, then the
> actual O/S is purely academic to the user?  Yes? 

Fundamentally, yes.

It's my opinion that Windows CE is entirely the wrong choice for this sort 
of platform, introducing more difficulties and issues than it actually 
appears to provide benefits, and this update is one example of how.  Even 
so, PulseData would argue that Windows CE's core functionality for HPC 
(HandHeld PC form factor) is already established and that this 
functionality is all relevant to the advancement of the product which only 
recently displayed any notion of rivalry to the nearest commercial PDA, 
inclusive of the PackMate whose functionality matches such a PDA.  
Examples of supported technologies can be found in your BrailleNote's 
manual.  At the time they made this choice, I might have been inclined to 
agree, for other operating systems were not advanced enough to support 
embedded applications at the time that Windows CE was generally an 
embedded system and a good, minimal platform with no obvious need for 
replacement.  Now, however, alternative operating systems exist which 
perform better and serve the purposes required of Windows CE now on modern 
standard hardware, usually at lower or nonexistant cost.  The Unix-like 
operating systems, in particular, are in my view relevant to the 
BrailleNote and similar products, because they provide text mode 
interfaces to their inner workings and to many out-of-the-tarball 
applications.  Equally, much general support for specific hardware is 
provided uniformly by a single driver and/or utility repository, making 
the nightmare of licensed hardware support on the BrailleNote a non-issue.

To summarise: you're right.  windows CE is not in your immediate view.  I 
believe it's wrong to use it - it's inherently graphical, the BrailleNote 
is inherently textual.  But any choice of operating system is utterly 
irrelevant to the end-user experience as far as the BrailleNote is 
concerned.

Cheers,
Sabahattin

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Sabahattin Gucukoglu
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