why would someone want to spend $$$ on a book courier to play text
recorded in mp3 if portable mp3 players are available at much lower cost?
The reason I want a book courier - or rather actually a book port - is
that it allows navigation of text files byparagraph, line, word or even
character and check the spelling and such, something that cannot be done
with either audio books or converted text2audio files.
I am not a particular fan of Doubletalk as it reads too slow IMO, at least
it did on the old doubletalk card I had, but I'd prefer hardware over
software speech any time because of hardware speech's higher
responsiveness and much lesser drain on resources.
I've heard somewhere that there is a major rework of Bookport in the
works, which is one reason that has let me hold off on looking into
purchasing one at the time. From what I remember, this revamp was also to
include a new voice or voices for bookport. Since book courier is a very
similar if not related device, I wonder if a similar upgrade or new
version is not also a possibility for book courier.
Unfortunately I do not have a written source for the Bookport upgrade
information but only heard people talk about it.
I think the bookworm is intersting for people who are good with braille
and prefer braille over speech output. I myself don't know enough braille
and have never used any peperless braille device but know that people who
are fluent braille readers usually prefer braille output.
Another thing to consider though is the storage capacity of whatever
portable unit is to be decided on. The book Courier or Bookport is fairly
new technology and can use changeable memory cards for storage. I think
the bookworm is more contempory to the older Roadrunner book reading
device that only came with 2 or 3 megs of onboard memory for storage. But
I do not have specifications on the bookworm and do not know if it can use
flash or other similar storage. I just wanted to point out that this is
something else to consider.
Cheers,
doris
At 10:39 AM 8/31/2005 +0100, you wrote:
Hi Mel
I have never used either product, but I would point out that with the book
Courier and Text Aloud from www.nextup.com, you can convert text to mp3
files at high speed using Microsoft's text-to-speech engine or any other
Sapi speech synthesiser that you might have. They also sell the A T and T
Natural Voices, Cepstral Voices, Neospeech Voices and I believe according
to
their user forums they will have Real speak Version 4 soon as well. So
you
could make mp3 files of your texts and then play them on the Book Courier.
Obviously this will be a little more work, and will use more battery
power.
The reason that the Book Courier's speech isn't that brilliant is that it
is
using a hardware speech chip rather than the software synthesisers we have
become used to in desktop screen readers. The advantage of this, though
is
that you can read text documents which take up less space in its memory
than
mp3 files and use less battery power because there is no decoding process
involved.
As far as the bookworm goes, yes it has an eight-character braille display
and you transfer texts to its internal memory. I'm sure someone else can
step in to fill in the details.
James
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mel Spooner" <mel.spooner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:05 AM
Subject: [access-uk] Book Courier Vs Bookworm
> Hi All,
>
> I am looking for a portable solution for reading. I know that the Book
> Courier will play Daisy files as well as MP3 files. I also know that
> it
> will read text files using synthetic speech. I've listened to the
> sample
> on the web site and wonder how anyone gets used to it, but I guess you
> do!
>
> I know a lot less about the bookworm. Am I right in thinking it has a
> Braille display? And what are its capabilities?
>
> If anyone has evaluated the two products, I be really interested to
> hear
> your views.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Mel
>
> Mel Spooner
> edIT Help Desk
> Nottinghamshire County Council
> Tel 0115 854 6116
> Email mel.spooner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
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