[bcab] Re: Laptops and Focus Braille displays

Hi Tim.

Not a direct answer to your question but have you thought about the
options from Dolphin.

You can get a PDA with all the office style functionality and
connectivity you want with a Bluetooth keyboard, Braille display and
headset.  The benefits to this are you can leave your PDA in your bag
and just have the keyboard and Braille display in front of you. Also
power is less likely to be a problem as each of the bits of kit have
there own battery. If you also use pocket hal I know for a fact you can
use the system with Braille allow and switch off the speech which for me
can be a little distracting in meetings.

If I could afford it this would be my system of choice.

Check out www.yourdolphin.com for details of the mainstream PDA's and
packages they offer.

Cheers.
Nick.


-----Original Message-----
From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of tim.pennick@xxxxxx
Sent: 28 September 2006 14:49
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bcab] Laptops and Focus Braille displays

Hi All, 

So I've more or less decided to buy a laptop for mobile work use.  I'm
wondering whether if I got hold of a focus 40 Braille display, I'd be
able to more or less just use the keyboard on the focus display for
note-taking, with the laptop running notepad.  What I'm trying to
achieve is a replacement for a Braille lite which can do Wi-Fi, can run
VPN and security software, but is also fairly easy to use for
straightforward Braille note-taking.  It occurred to me that I could
just use the focus display in "typing" mode, i.e. what you type on its
keyboard gets entered as text rather than initiating a function.  I
could then keep the laptop lid down to conserve power, and more or less
use the Focus like a braille-lite, until I want to do something more
complex like run Outlook, in which case I'd open the lid of the laptop
and use the native keyboard.

What I'm not sure of, is whether you can send all the necessary key
combinations from the Focus keyboard e.g. ALT-Tab.  Also the drain on a
battery would be fairly crucial as a factor in deciding whether or not
this was feasible.  I'm thinking about the Toshiba Portage, and would be
interested in any views on whether the battery in this type of machine
would be likely to cope with a few hours running in a meeting
environment driving a Focus display via USB connection.

Can anyone else think of any reason why this is a really bad idea or
wouldn't work? 

Regards, and thanks, 

Tim 

Tim Pennick 
tel:    01473 609040 
BTnet:  00 1609040 
email:  tim.pennick@xxxxxx 


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