All this stories are so fascinating...! Many of these computers you guys are talking about are way older than me anyway... I started using DOS with a spanish screen reader called Habla. Well I think it was developed in Spain, but I don't know if anyone else ever tried it. It was kind of similar to JAWS for Dos. I used that thing with an external synth connected through the serial port. The synth was made in Spain too, and it was pretty fancy for the time. Well, actually it might not be a spanish synth, I don't know. It had some very very sharp braille dots on it that said "Ciberveu". No seriously, they were sharp enough that if you tried to read them with too much energy I guess they could hurt you and everything! I was 7 or 8 years old by then, so I only used Word Perfect and a dictionary that came in some 6 or 7 disketes. I even had a really, really loud embosser that I still use these days. After that I started using a PC with Windows 98 when I was 10 or 11. It had a 1gb HD and 64mb ram. After going through all those Windows PC's I finally got a Macbook aluminum and I can't be any happier with it... Oh well, my story is obviously boring and uninteresting, but somehow I wrote it anyway...
Ignasi On Jun 7, 2009, at 5:01 AM, Krister Ekstrom wrote: > > Hi folks, > I don't know if i have told you my computer history fully and if i > had, feel free to skip this mail. > I think i am one of the few blind people who actually started my > computer experience in a graphical environment and loved it from the > start. > The very first computer like thing i had was an Eureka A4, ya know > those note takers with thermometer, clock, calendar and many more > things on them. It had its own variation of Cp/m so it was a command > line interface. Then by accident or coinsidence or how one should say > it, i and my work mates stumbled upon Outspoken through an ad in a > paper. We decided to try it out since a work mate on my job back then > had a Mac Se30 with System 7 on it. It so happened that one of > rehabilitation people i knew had a copy of Outspoken in a drawer that > he had discarded as useless some time ago. I asked if i could borrow > it and test it and got reluctant permission. Boy, was i glad when i > discovered that not only could i access the Mac, but i could use it > just as well as my sighted collegues, with the exception of graphics > editing. I got a mac myself, that is first we rented a Mac Classic > with 80 Meg hard drive and i thought that "I'm never gonna fill this > gigantic hard drive". The experimentations went so well that i got my > own Mac a Mac II Vx with 200 meg hard drive. This must have been > around 1993 or something. I also had a Powerbook back then. This setup > went with me until 1996 or thereabouts when i was more or less forced > to switch to PC. Of course i was curious as to what one could do with > a PC and Dos so that was one of the reasons i switched. As i had used > Outspoken and loved it on the Mac, i decided to try Outspoken for > Windows when it came out. It was quite good, but not as good as the > Mac version. > Time went by and i tried various Windows incarnations, 95, 98 and XP, > and now i'm back on the mac again and love it. > One thing that i must mention before i finish this longish mail is > that the only braille embosser compatible with the mac at that time in > Sweden, at least that's what they said, was a big loud thing called > the Versapoint, anione remember that one? I never got that one to > work. > Well thanks for reading this looooongish letter of nostalgia. > /Krister > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
