[nabs-l] netbook replacing notetakers

[David Andrews]

While the consensus here seems to be that notetakers will do fine, I 
think their days are numbered.  I Direct the Assistive Technology 
unit of the state agency for the blind in Minnesota, and I know that 
we buy very few note takers, as compared to a few years ago.  This 
doesn't mean they are dead, but it is a huge factor.

We do buy some, but we buy a lot of laptops, some sub-laptops, some 
smart phones, some Net PC's.  There are now Bluetooth Braille 
displays which you can use with desktops, laptops, phones, and net 
PC's and while not as convenient, they are more flexible.

Dave

At 01:40 PM 1/26/2009, you wrote:
>My opinion is that they will not. Like others have said, notetakers 
>take less time to boot up than does a laptop, plus for those of us 
>using braille it's a lot easier to pull one device out ofthe 
>backpack to put on the desk. In addition to that, you can guarantee 
>that you won't have to plug in any time during class, and that's 
>often a bonus as plugs aren't always readily available. With that 
>said, I can't use my pacc mate as my primary device, either. I'm 
>still working with 4.1 because all I use it for is a notetaker, andi 
>find it slow online compared to my laptop and there are many other 
>things like formatting which i have found much easier with a full 
>laptop/desktop. But I never think, at least for class settings, that 
>I would ever go back to a laptop without a braille display like i 
>had in high school, I've gotten too used to working without speech 
>in class, andseing things instantly. I think those are reasns 
>enough, even though I am working with the QX version and could 
>switch to a keyboard easily. That's because I can type much faster 
>than i can braille, since I adopted the computer early on in my life.
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David Andrews and white cane Harry.