Hello Tom. I'm not sure if you've seen messages pertaining to the fact
that GW Micro is not the direct manufacturer of the BookSense. If you
have not seen those or you didn't know, perhaps this might explain
things. The manufacturer of the SEnse line of products we sell are made
by HIMS and we must go by HIMS scheduling. We have beta testers and we
do spend time testing the products, but we don't develop them directly.
Many thanks.
On 11/18/2009 1:30 PM, Tom G wrote:
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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