[nabs-l] VR Stream pros and cons

[Chelsea Cook]

Ashley,

  I love my Stream! At first I was reluctant to get one, but then 
I found out what it can do.  I use it all the time for reading 
books from NLS and RFBD.  It is easy to get authorization keys 
from these places.  If you have a Web Braille account or are 
affiliated with your library, you should be able to complete an 
application for the new download site.  With RFBD, go to your My 
Account on the online version and select "Authorize New Player." 
Then you just type in the serial number.  I don't use it for 
recording as much now, but that may change.
  There is a program that comes with it called HumanWare Stream 
Companion.  This makes your talking books from NLS easy to 
transfer.  RFBD is more tedious, but I'm trying to see if there's 
an easier way to do it.  You can create bookmarks and transfer 
notes (recordings), to your computer with this program.  I've 
never tried playlists, but I love the Random music feature, 
similar to the concept of the IPod shuffle.  You can't navigate 
by song title and artist, per se, but if you know how your music 
structure is laid out, you can find a specific song by knowing 
its file and folder coordinates.  The Stream will accept those.  
The only other problem I face sometimes is with the NLS books, 
you can't do page navigation.  It doesn't support Word documents 
yet.  Only t x t, b r f, and Html.  You can do word searches in 
these documents, and it makes it easier if you know how to text 
because it uses those same conventions for numbers.  I haven't 
had the practice yet.
  Overall: If you're in college and use NLS and RFBD for most of 
your reading, it's an excellent, all-in-one device.  You can put 
up to a 16 gig HC SD.  card in it (I hear it has issues with 
anything higher), as well as USB flash drives.
Hope this helps,
Chelsea
"I ask you to look both ways.  For the road to a knowledge of the 
stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom 
has been reached through the stars."
Sir Arthur Eddington, British astrophysicist (1882-1944), Stars 
and Atoms (1928), Lecture 1