Hi. What is a pen friend. Is this a new device?
----- Original Message -----
From: Barry G
To: Access Mailing List
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 11:46 AM
Subject: [access-uk] First impression of penfriend...
Well, mine came this morning and here's my first impressions...
The labelling and reading function works well, it's easy to use,
smaller and lighter than I expected. It picks up the tags and plays
the note quickly, and the sound quality is fine - it does exactly
what it says on the box and I reckon it's an excellent little device.
My concerns...
Mine came with a short fly lead to convert between the standard
headphone jack and the smaller jack socket on the penfriend -
someone mentioned that there had been a manufacturing glitch and the
wrong jacks were fitted to the early batches. It would seem that
these mis-manufactured models have been issued to customers.
I tried the mp3 player function and there are no instructions for
using this feature on the product guide at rnib.org other than
telling you to paste the music to the mp3 folder on the device.
That's fine, but there are no instructions for operating it. Can't
remember which, but either the power or the record button toggles
play/stop. Sound quality is not sparkling, but it's acceptable in a
device that doesn't try to be a dedicated mp3 player. There
appears to be no way of moving from file to file however, so at
first glance, it's not really very useable.
My single serious gripe is the volume! The product guide and the
tags on the packaging correctly say that the device defaults to the
same volume each time the machine is switched off and on, and this
is rather high. The real pain, on mine at least, is that it jumps
to this high volume each time a new label is scanned, even though
the volume has been turned down, so you have to reset it on each
scan! I'm hoping that there may be firmware updates that will
include a fix for this, but there is no mention of this in the
product information.
Finally, the online product info sheet says the following:
RNIB are developing some associated products that are pre-recorded.
If you wish to listen to RNIB’s pre-recorded information then you
will need to use the download feature. You must have access to the
web and connect to www.rnib.org.uk/penfriend. You will see a list of
titles available for download. These titles are free or are part of
any subscription system that you may have joined with RNIB. Click on
any single title to download and save on to your computer’s hard
drive. For example, c:\penfriend\downloads. After you have
downloaded all the titles you are entitled to, connect PenFriend to
the computer using the USB cable. Next, enter or double click on
any title and an audio installer programme will appear, and then
just follow the simple instructions on screen. This programme will
automatically load the audio file onto PenFriend. Repeat the process
for the other titles that you have downloaded. Remember, a copy of
all titles is always kept on your hard drive so there is no need to
back up. The audio files will be kept on the AP4 folder in PenFriend.
Well, the link doesn't exist or is broken.
All the best,
Barry G
__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
signature database 4295 (20090731) __________
The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
http://www.eset.com
