[nabs-l] netbook replacing notetakers

Tue Jan 27 02:42:16 UTC 2009

Well I could easily see someone developing software for the netbooks that 
can emulate a perkins style keyboard, produce braille and save it in popular 
formats such as brf. In fact this is just the type of thing that you can do 
with Duxbury.

Dezman
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Spangler" <spangler.robert at gmail.com>
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 8:25 PM
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] netbook replacing notetakers

>I also see the netbook surpassing the Braille note taker; however, I don't 
>understand how one is going to do math as easily on the laptop/netbook as 
>they would on a Braille notetaker.  I have never used a Braille display on 
>a computer before, and perhaps it is possible this way, but I find it 
>easier to input math with a Perkins-style keyboard on a note taker.  Would 
>the Braille displays with the Perkins keyboards be an equal substitute? 
>with the battery life of the newer EEEPC netbooks from Asus I can very well 
>see them being used as replacements for note takers.
>
> Robby
>
> T. Joseph Carter wrote:
>> David, I think in this age of netbooks being so cheap, the days of the 
>> Windows CE based notetaker are numbered, even if the notetaker lives on. 
>> I say that because the notetaker is a hideously expensive custom device 
>> from the ground up, and the netbook is a cheap commodity device with 
>> higher power.
>>
>> The cost of adapting a netbook to Braille display and keyboard is cheaper 
>> than the cost of building a notetaker.  Plus, notetakers do not really 
>> "boot" so much as they "wake up" from a power-saving mode.  When you have 
>> to reboot them, they do take about as long as starting Windows XP off a 
>> solid state disk--primarily because they're doing something very similar 
>> with a Windows CE platform on a slower system with fewer resources.
>>
>> I fear though that the rise of the notetaker gave us easy access to 
>> Braille.  That's likely to go away if netbooks supplant them, even if the 
>> power/usage differences are resolved.
>>
>> Joseph
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 04:00:01PM -0600, David Andrews wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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