Hello:
I concur 100% on your decision to hold off on buying this
product. I wish I had seen this list before I bought it. I went
solly on the PR and vendor information. What the Bookscense promised
is much more than I saw in the Stream. Your item #3 was also one of
my reasons for the BS. Also, the Bluetooth (which I can not get to
work), and the removable flash and the external thumb drive
capabilities were also pluses. Not to mention the yet not available
but promised ability to handle Ovedrdrive from the public libraries.
If I had the option to get a full refund and rebuy it once it has
been proved I would. Good decision to wait. GW Micro seems to think
the Microsoft model of send out marginal product and make your
customer debug it is the way to go versus the Apple model of make it
work first.
Not to mention it is real annoying to not get an approximate release
date for the fixes, other than "soon."
GW Micro has done itself a disservice by rushing this product out,
which hopefully will not hurt it as long as the Microsoft Windows
problems. Seen the add for Apple versus Windows 7. (It will not
have the problems of Vista, ... Windows ME, .. Windows 95, Widnows 2)
Tom
At 11/18/2009, Suleyman Gokyigit wrote:
Ron,
I have not bought a Booksense but was seriously considering it, and that is
why I joined the lists and started researching the performance of the unit.
For me, there were four main reasons why I began to consider the Booksense:
1. Form factor. The Booksense is smaller and a lot sleeker than the Stream.
The Stream looks like it is from the 1980s, whereas the Booksense looks very
modern and nice.
2. The TTS. The Stream uses the Nuance Samantha and Tom voices which are
not very good for listening to long text files or non-audio DAISY books.
Too many pronunciation errors, and very poor pausing with quotation marks;
for example, it is difficult to understand when one person stops and another
one starts speaking in a dialog because if there are quote marks, the TTS
appears to not pause, even if there are other punctuation preceding the
quote marks, such as question marks, periods, etc. Kate is a much more
pleasant TTS. While I have not used Kate to listen to anything other than
what I have heard on podcasts and using the demo on neospeech.com, it
appears that it is a better TTS. As far as pronunciation, however, I really
can't comment until I listen to something of any significant length with it.
3. The folder structure. While the Stream supports folder navigation to
some extent, it is only possible in certain folders (you can't do it in the
DAISY books folder or in the Audible folder). In addition, in the folders
that do support subfolder navigation, it is implemented in what I consider
to be a clunky, non-intuitive manner. The Booksense's folder navigation is
far more intuitive, given it behaves just as any computer would when
navigating folders.
4. Additional file types. The Booksense does support quite a few additional
file types than the Stream, including the big one for me, Audible enhanced
format.
The above four were the big ones for me as to why I started looking at the
Booksense. Unfortunately, given all the problems and issues reported by so
many users (I know not by all; some of you have had no problems, but enough
of you have), I have decided to hold off and see how the Booksense behaves
after the next firmware before making any decisions.
Suleyman
http://www.twitter.com/hllf
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