[Electronics-talk] Purchasing Adaptive Equipment

[James Aldrich]

Hi all!

Montana and Wyoming have specific state programs which can be utilized for 
purchasing adaptive equipment!

I believe a few things need to be said about adaptive equipment!  Shop 
around before you purchase especially when one has more available today than 
at any time in the past!  Of course, there is the specific adaptive products 
for the blind.  Yet!  There are others which can work right out of the box! 
The I products as Iphone, Ipod and Ipad come to mind!  More on these later! 
We unfortunately are paying much too much for out of date technology when 
purchasing any of the blindness notetakers!  Some years ago, I bought a 
Voice Sense!  I'm happy with it for the most part for what I use it for! 
Now that I have high speed internet from my cable company, I cannot use my 
Voice Sense online.  My modem will allow most devices to connect with either 
TKIP or AES connections.  That is all I'll say about this specifically but 
every PC in my house, my ipod and Iphone connect fine with my present 
router.  Even my BPP and my Wife's Plextalk Pocket connect fine with my 
router.  This is not so with my Voice Sense!  I don't believe any of these 
$6000 blindness notetakers will work with my present high speed cable 
connection!  I feel fortunate I don't have all this money tied up in 
something I can no longer use online.  I brought this up with my cable 
company and they thought I was from outer space somehow!  One can pay 
considerably less for a bluetooth braille display which connects with 
bluetooth with Ipod and IPhone.  I'm finding I can do Email much easier on 
my Ipod or Iphone than I can the VS.  Perhaps one day, I'll get that 
refreshabraille from APH but this is considerably less than the notetaker. 
I can get material onto my notetaker via USb which is fine but I may as well 
have a Braille and Speak which I also liked when I had one!  So when you get 
anything else, ask questions before you purchase!  Braille and speech are 
coming into their own on more and more devices especially I products and 
Android platform.  For now, I won't buy any blindness notetaker at any price 
unless it connects with most modern day internet protocols.  I visited some 
friends recently!  They had no security on their router so they could 
accommodate their blindness notetakers.  Mine worked reasonably well but I 
thought it was ashamed they had to dum down what was available to them.  We 
use the same internet provider.  My wife and I have moved on and left our 
notetakers behind!  It is a shame our state services pay for this over 
priced out of date stuff!

For whatever it is worth!

Jim