I just wanted to remark that your suggestions were excellent and very well put. This is a message that would be great put together with a review of some of the current displays for people to read as the consider which display would be the best for them.
Congratulations on a good brief overview. ----- Original Message ----- From: erik burggraaf To: John W. Carty Cc: '[email protected]' Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:13 PM Subject: Re: braille displays Hi John, The best and most valuable thing you can do when purchasing a braille display is to put as many of them in your hand and feel them as you possibly can. They all have vastly different texture to the sells, and it is important to get one that has a control surface you like. This is a lot of money we're talking about here, and your own personal comfort is the most important thing. After that, the next most important thing is size. This is because sice will have a direct impact on portability and cost. Personally I like to get them as small as possible. About the bigest I like to go is a braille connect 40 or an alva bc640 or possibly a handytech braille wave. Personally I hate the idea of using a braille note taker as a full time braille display. They are big and expensive. Great in situations where you need a braille note taker and ocasionally like to hook it up to the computer for fun, but not nice in situations where you rely on braille for your computer use and ocasionally want a note taker. If you find yourself in that position, consider a simbian or windows mobile handheld with your braille display hooked up wirelessly. I'd consider any braille display without wireless functionality worthless at this point unless I'd bought it 5 years ago before bluetooth and it was still working great. Even if you don't think you'll use it you might be pleasantly surprised. I'm also partial to read/write displays, such as the braille connect, alva bc640, braille wave, and focus blue. It doesn't cost that much more, but it allows you to completely control your pc, which is nice when you decide to work or read laying down, answering your emails comfortably on the sofa lounging on fluffy pillows. You can't do that with the brailliant, even though I like that display as far as it goes. If you were using the other guy I'd be worried about screen reader compadibility, but you are using a real screen reader, so as worries go, this is way down near the bottom. WE is so configurable. Over christmas I set up a braille connect for my sister, and she wanted a key on the display to bring up the windows run dialog. No problem. The only thing we didn't get set was grade two braille input, but I think they did fix this, so you might have that option if you go braille connect. Hope this helps, erik burggraaf A+ certified technician and user support consultant. Phone: 888-255-5194 Email: [email protected] On 2010-03-24, at 10:29 AM, John W. Carty wrote: I’m considering the purchase of my first Braille display. Can anyone offer model suggestions that work particularly well with WE? Why? Thanx, John Carty If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv. If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv. If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
