[Electronics-talk] Looking for a cheap accessible voice recorder

[Roberthansen1970@gmail.com]

Has the victor gone up that much? I bought mine 3 years ago and it was 339.
-----Original Message-----
Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 9:21:20 am
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances" <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
From: "Frida Aizenman" <aizenman at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Looking for a cheap accessible voice recorder

I come kicking and screaming onto the 21st century. LOL.
Never before in my life, had I had a digital recorder. As far as I am
concern, for now, the Olympus DM520 Digital Recorder with Talking Menus is
as good as it gets. It costs $195. Give or take, the Milestone 12 costs
$400. The Victor Reader costs $449. Sure, it has more features, but at  the
moment, I don't need more. As the saying goes, "You get what you pay for."
And don't forget that the next time you want the same product, it might not
be around anymore. You no longer can get a Milestone 11 any more. Of course,
that is not all bad, because sometimes you find a better product.
The only thing not accessible on the Olympus DM520 is being able to set the
time and date by yourself. According to the podcast I listen to, and learned
from, the blind community worked with Olympus on accessibility for this
product.
The podcast can be found at:
Blind Cool Tech Podcast

http://www.blindcooltech.com/
and then link on
Olympus DM520 And DM420
Also, if you go to the Olympus Company at:
olympusamerica.com/support
the manual is on a type of PDF that is inaccessible.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Oso Calmo" <osocalmo at yahoo.co.jp>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances"
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 7:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Looking for a cheap accessible voice
recorder


> Thank you, Frida, for telling me your experience.  In fact, I'm looking
> for a much cheaper one: let's say $50 or $60.  There are lots of cheap
> voice recorders, but either they are not accessible or they don't have
> computer interface.
>
> Is your Olympus voice recorder really good?
> In fact, I had a sad experience last year when I tried
> dm-4.  The menues talked but not all the time (all the items).  Sometimes
> I had to wait a lot for the voice to come and there were some instances
> where it didn't speak.  So, I thought that I would have to remember all
> the instances it didn't talk to be able to use it comfortably.  There were
> some instances when I had no idea about what was happening unless I ask
> someone to look at the screen.
> Also, I could use daisy to some extent, but it seems that to be able to do
> fine jumps, etc, you have to rely on the screen.  I couldn't install the
> software to easily exchange files with my computer, even using the latest
> version of JAWS.  Jaws couldn't speak any dialogs of the installer and I
> couldn't read them even in review cursor mode.  So I needed sighted
> assistance to have it installed.
>
> Its sound quality is very good and it has lots of interesting functions;
> so I really wanted to be able to use it and buy one, but I got tired.  I
> downloaded the manual from the internet and it was really difficult to
> read, too: very specific and, as a result, full of repetitions, absolutely
> easy to read for a sighted person, because they can easily jump to the
> desired item and have all the information they need there, skipping the
> t