[bksvol-discuss] Braille Note or Pack Mate

  • From: "Sharon Jackson" <dolly1025@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Bookshare" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 08:02:41 -0400

------------Hello,

I have been following the discussion about the Braille Note versus Pack Mate 
and thought others would enjoy reading the article, "Braille Note or Pack Mate" 
from the July-August issue of the Braille Monitor.  


The Braille Monitor                                                             
                                     July 2005 
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BrailleNote or PAC Mate:
A Matter of Personal Preference

by Danika Rockett  
      Jim Gashel (right), NFB executive director of strategic initiatives, is 
enthusiastic about his PAC Mate, which he uses with his cell phone to download 
email on his way to the office in the morning. Mark Riccobono (left), NFB 
manager of education services, is equally committed to his BrailleNote 

            From the Editor: On May 1, 2005, Danika Taylor, NFB copyeditor, 
married Don Rockett. When she returned from her honeymoon, she sat down to talk 
with several electronic notetaker users about the features they liked and did 
not like in the units they had chosen. Here is the result of those 
conversations. It is not a careful review by the International Braille and 
Technology Center (IBTC) staff, but it does contain interesting information and 
views. This is what she says:

             The decision to spend upwards of five thousand dollars on a device 
that can fit in the palm of a hand and allow blind people to read, write, keep 
track of appointments, and even do email on the go should not be taken lightly. 
For most of us contemplating the purchase of a Braille notetaker, the sticker 
shock involved in the process is also accompanied by the equally unsettling 
lists of technical specifications and claims and counterclaims which those who 
sell these devices make.

            In this article we turn directly to the experience of several 
longtime Federationists who use their notetakers every day. Their observations 
are based not on theoretical or technical data but on the reality of living day 
in and day out with a particular notetaker.

            If you would like to explore your personal notetaker needs with the 
experts at the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind 
(IBTC), they invite you to do so. They can be reached at the technology answer 
line: (410) 659-9314, option 5 on the automated greeting.

Humanware's BrailleNote and Freedom Scientific's PAC Mate are two of the most 
popular Braille notetakers. For various reasons some users prefer one machine 
to the other, but just what is the difference between these two seemingly 
similar products? 

            We might begin with physical characteristics, for herein lie the 
most obvious differences. The BrailleNote is smaller in height and width than 
the PAC Mate but slightly thicker. To be specific, the BrailleNote is 9.9 by 
6.1 by 2 inches, and the PAC Mate is 11 by 6.81 by 1.93 inches. To be sure, 
these differences are slight, and as J.R. Westmoreland said in his 2005 CSUN 
(California State University at Northridge) conference paper titled 
"BrailleNote or PAC Mate: A Side-by-Side Comparison," the difference in size is 
a "minor factor navigating in tight areas." A smaller BrailleNote, the 
BrailleNote PK, is a mere 6.8 by 3.6 by 1.3 inches, but it comes with only an 
18-cell display option, and at around $5,000 the smaller dimensions might not 
be worth the cost for many users.

            The weight of each product varies a bit depending on the model and 
the size of the refreshable Braille display. The 20-cell PAC Mate weighs 3 
pounds, 9 ounces, whereas the 18-cell BrailleNote weighs 2.2 pounds; likewise, 
the 40-cell PAC Mate weighs 4 pounds, while the 32-cell BrailleNote weighs 2.9 
pounds. Therefore, although the PAC Mate weighs more than the BrailleNote, the 
larger size of the PAC Mate's Braille display may be an important consideration 
for some users. 

            Both machines have wireless network access support, the option of a 
QWERTY keyboard, and similar external connections and hardware slots. Of course 
these details vary slightly from model to model. J.R. Westmoreland praises the 
PAC Mate's support of CF cards. "The BrailleNote," he says, "has a limited 
number of cards that are supported. The PAC Mate, on the other hand, not only 
supports these cards but many other cards that have drivers for Pocket PC."

            We could go on and on about the characteristics of each machine, 
but in the end the question of which is better comes down to personal 
preference. Diehard advocates exist for most notetakers on the market, 
depending on the individual user's needs. 

            Adrienne Asch, Henry R. Luce Professor in Biology, Ethics, and the 
Politics of Human Reproduction at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, is a 
BrailleNote user. However, she is certainly not a diehard advocate. "The 
BrailleNote has many fine features," she says. "But it has a few major 
problems, at least from my point of view."

           Footnotes, or rather the lack thereof, are among Dr. Asch's 
complaints. "The BrailleNote will not permit the writing of footnotes or 
endnotes in Microsoft Word documents," she says. Therefore any articles she 
writes requiring footnotes or endnotes--and she is a prolific academic 
scholar--must be written, or at least finished, on the computer using a Braille 
display or speech, which can be inconvenient and is certainly inefficient. 

           The BrailleNote "will also not display footnotes or endnotes in Word 
documents sent to me," she continues. "This means that I must open the file on 
a laptop or desktop computer and convert it to ASCII format. If I don't have 
computer access, I simply cannot read the footnotes or endnotes." These 
complaints are important, but they demonstrate how much personal needs and 
preferences determine which notetaker to buy. A person who does not regularly 
use footnotes or endnotes may not be bothered by the fact that no device using 
Pocket PC can identify footnotes and endnotes at all.

           Another problem for Dr. Asch involves formatting. "Although the 
manual claims that documents can be prepared in Braille and then formatted for 
printing, that claim is only partly accurate," she says. "If one wishes to 
create italicized, bolded, or underlined material in a printed document, one 
cannot use the format menu within the Braille document to do so. One must 
manually do this formatting from within the translated file."

            She also faults the BrailleNote for reading fewer and fewer of the 
many documents she wants it to display. "More and more email attachments are in 
formats, whether advanced versions of Microsoft Word, RTF, or some other format 
that the BrailleNote will not display," she complains. "Again, the only 
solution is to take the file to a standard laptop or desktop, convert it to an 
ASCII text file, and then return the newly formatted file to the BrailleNote. 
This conversion means a loss of formatting, meaning that I cannot edit the 
document in the same format in which it was sent to me. The device is no longer 
a reliable method of reading documents prepared in electronic form that are 
given to me at meetings, conferences, and the like. I will soon find that I 
must travel with a laptop, if only to convert the documents I am given, in 
order to do my actual reading on the BrailleNote. I had hoped with the newest 
software upgrade, 6.11, that I would have solved the problem of unreadable 
documents; I have not solved it. When I send examples of unreadable documents 
to Humanware's technical support staff, they generally tell me that they too 
cannot read them on their machines, but they have no suggestions or solutions."

           Mark Riccobono, National Federation of the Blind manager of 
education programs, is a satisfied BrailleNote user. In fact he liked the 
BrailleNote so much that he recently upgraded to the smaller BrailleNote PK. He 
says that the PK is similar to the previous models, other than the size (it is 
currently the smallest notetaker on the market) and the USB port.

           Unlike Adrienne Asch, Mark Riccobono is not bothered by the 
BrailleNote's inability to deal with footnotes or endnotes. It isn't that he 
doesn't use them, but he considers his BrailleNote more of a supplement to his 
PC than a stand-alone computer, so he doesn't mind transferring documents for 
editing. One feature he enjoys is the PK's portability and power. "I can carry 
around my contacts and synchronize them with Microsoft Outlook," he says. "I am 
on the road a lot, and if I meet someone, it is easy to enter the information 
into my PK. Then, when I get to the office, I simply synchronize the 
information with Outlook, and it is there. Also the calendar feature is a major 
advantage because it too synchronizes with Outlook. And I can work on documents 
while I am commuting, then transfer them to my PC when I get to work. Basically 
I treat my PK like a PDA, not like a PC replacement."

           He admits, however, that formatting causes the occasional 
frustration. "Transferring from a Word document causes it to appear in a 
different format, which destroys the formatting, so I have to go back and 
correct it. That is definitely frustrating sometimes, especially when I am in a 
hurry. But I don't worry about it too much because I use my PC most of the 
time."

           Another disadvantage of the PK is its lack of audio streaming 
ability. While the PAC Mate has the ability to stream audio from the Internet, 
the PK does not. Anyone who knows Riccobono knows he is an avid baseball fan, 
and the feature he would most like to see added to the PK is the ability to 
stream audio, especially baseball broadcasts. Like Dr. Asch's, his complaints 
are a matter of personal preference. Not every user will consider streaming 
audio to be a priority when making a purchasing decision. 

           As for audio quality, though, Chad Allen, government programs 
specialist (intern) for the National Federation of the Blind, loves the fact 
that his BrailleNote PK has stereo quality audio for his enjoyment while 
listening to the many MP3s he has downloaded onto the device. Allen also 
praises the built-in Bluetooth technology feature on the PK. "I use my Nokia 
6620 model cell phone to surf the Internet on my PK," he says. "I use the 
Mobile Speak software and my cell phone as a modem, and I have another 
Internet-surfing option anywhere I go." The BrailleNote PK comes with Bluetooth 
technology installed, whereas this technology must be purchased separately for 
other notetaking devices. Again, for those who are less computer savvy or are 
not interested in the capacity to surf the Internet at a moment's notice, this 
technology does not factor heavily into the decision-making process.

           Allen, a Jaws user, mentions that Freedom Scientific does not 
support the use of Jaws with competing notetakers such as Humanware's 
BrailleNote PK. "I didn't know this when I purchased the device. I assumed I 
could use the Jaws screen reader on a PC with my PK doubling as a refreshable 
Braille Display, but it didn't work. I was disappointed because I had to 
purchase and install a new screen reader, but overall the PK is a great 
notetaker, and I am very satisfied with it."

           Eric Duffy is an NFB leader in Ohio. He is technologically 
sophisticated and spends a significant amount of time helping other blind 
people solve technology problems. This is what he says about his decision to 
use the PAC Mate: "I was a Braille 'n Speak user beginning in the late 
eighties. I then got a Braille Lite not long after it came out. Both of these 
devices were good-quality notetakers, but they are not even in the same league 
with the PAC Mate. It is far more than a note taker. The capacity and 
versatility of the PAC Mate exceed that of the Braille 'n Speak and Braille 
Lite, first developed by Blazie Engineering and now supported, at least 
minimally, by Freedom Scientific.

            "The BrailleNote was the first product in what most of us think of 
as the modern class of notetakers for the blind. I had heard about the 
BrailleNote before it hit the market, and I began to use one as soon as I could 
get my hands on a loaner unit. I liked some things about it but before buying 
decided to wait to try the new product from Freedom Scientific that was soon to 
be released. I really wanted to compare the BrailleNote and PAC Mate and make 
an informed choice about which product would best meet my needs. I have chosen 
the PAC Mate. Here are my thoughts about both products.

            "The BrailleNote is still a proprietary product, which is to say 
that the Keysoft user interface and suite of applications is developed and 
supported by the manufacturer of the BrailleNote, Humanware. So off-the-shelf 
products cannot be used with the BrailleNote. 

            "I like the fact that the PAC Mate runs on a Windows®Mobile-based 
technology. This is the same system that sighted consumers use to operate their 
PDAs. Programs released for PDAs in the general market can more easily be 
adapted for the PAC Mate. 

            "I use the PAC Mate every day for word processing, email, and more. 
I like the fact that I can synchronize email as well as contacts and files 
between the PAC Mate and my PC. Using the PAC Mate, I can write email messages 
using contracted Braille and with a key stroke have the message translated to 
computer Braille and sent. I can work in Pocket Word using contracted Braille 
and have the file easily translated into print. 

            "I am pleased with the connectivity of the PAC Mate. Because of it 
I am no longer tied to my computer to be productive. I can send files to my 
computer or through email using my wireless network or Active Sync. It is also 
possible to beam files from one Pac Mate to another or for that matter send 
them to a laptop or a PDA. I can have instant access to information in 
contracted Braille as long as the producer of the file can beam it to me or put 
it on a flash drive.

            "I have learned by painful experience that, if I want to be 
absolutely certain that I do not lose the data I am working with, I must store 
it in internal flash. When storing information in main memory, one runs the 
risk of losing it when the PAC Mate crashes, which it does more frequently than 
I would like, or if it is necessary to perform a hard reset. Information can 
also be lost if the battery gets too low. In theory, because the PAC Mate has 
an internal battery, one can wait up to seventy-two hours after the battery 
dies before recharging the unit without losing data, but theory and reality are 
very different, and users have learned the hard way not to let the battery lose 
its charge completely. 

            "Freedom Scientific strongly recommends that one use Active Sync or 
Sprite Backup to be sure that data and settings are not lost. Sprite Backup 
involves saving data to a flash card, and Active Sync enables a backup directly 
to a PC.

            "I very much like the fact that the Braille display can be detached 
from the PAC Mate. If I am having a problem with my display, I can return it 
for service without having to send the Pac Mate back. Of course the reverse is 
true as well. If I am having a problem with the PAC Mate, I can use the display 
with my PC while the main unit is being repaired. I don't enjoy having to pay 
extra for Bluetooth cards, WiFi cards, and other peripherals, But again, if I 
have a faulty card, I can replace it without having to send the entire unit in 
for service.

            "It does seem to me that the BrailleNote is most useful for those 
who do not need or want to connect to other devices. The operating system is 
simple, and the learning curve is easy. Freedom Scientific markets the Pac Mate 
by saying that, if you know JAWS and if you know Windows, you know how to use 
the PAC Mate. Although I don't fully agree with that statement, knowing these 
programs certainly shortens the learning curve for new PAC Mate users, yet 
there is still a good bit to master.

            "I do have two serious concerns about the PAC Mate. The first is 
that Pocket Word is not as functional as it could and should be. In fact it is 
really better to work in FSEdit, the word-processing program developed by 
Freedom Scientific. When told about problems that crop up for users who are 
trying to edit files in Pocket Word, Freedom staff respond by saying that the 
problem is Microsoft's. The same response occurs when problems with other 
programs are mentioned. I believe that, if a program has been installed on the 
PAC Mate by Freedom Scientific, any problems that arise are its responsibility. 
This is especially true because Freedom promotes the PAC Mate by saying it 
works with Word and other programs it has not created.

            "It also advertises the PAC Mate as a machine that can support many 
off-the-shelf programs and devices. Freedom Scientific recommends a Web site 
called <www.pacmategear.com> as the place to find and order up-to-date 
information about programs and devices that run on the PAC Mate--that is, until 
a problem develops. Then <www.pacmategear.com> is strictly unofficial. It seems 
to me that Freedom cannot expect to have it both ways; either it advertises 
that the site carries programs and equipment that are compatible with the PAC 
Mate and Freedom supports and will trouble-shoot them, or the company should 
not try to expand the attractiveness of its product by nominally affiliating 
itself with programs and hardware it disavows when trouble strikes.

            "Another ongoing issue is the fact that Freedom announced its 
intent to release a global positioning system (GPS) program for the PAC Mate 
over a year ago and began accepting orders and payment for it. When pressed to 
divulge what is going on with the GPS, which is still not available, Freedom 
just says that it is waiting for Destonator, the publisher of the software 
platform for the GPS system, to make the software changes necessary to run on 
the PAC Mate. The cynic in me suspects that Freedom announced the GPS system in 
June of 2004 knowing that it would not be ready for months but eager to stay 
competitive with the BrailleNote, which already had a functioning GPS system. 
All software producers exhibit unconstructive optimism about when new products 
will be available, but accepting orders and billing for the programs months or 
years ahead of delivery strikes me as unfair. My advice to potential notetaker 
users is to be sure that the products and features they find attractive and 
plan to order really are already available or will be so in the very near 
future."

            There you have the thoughts and experiences of several BrailleNote 
and PAC Mate users. When all is said and done, a number of notetaking devices 
are on the market. Cost will usually be a factor in deciding which one to 
purchase because many of these devices cost several thousand dollars. Potential 
buyers must consider how they intend to use the notetaker in order to determine 
which features are necessities and which are just added bonuses. Visiting the 
Web sites of companies that build or sell notetaking devices can provide lots 
of information, like specs, prices, and features of different machines, but 
talking with current users is always a great way to get sensible, useful 
information about the various models currently on the market. Remember also 
that the staff of the International Braille and Technology Center of the 
Jernigan Institute answer questions about notetakers every day. Their expertise 
and assistance are never more than a phone call or email away.

            In short, no electronic notetaker is right for everyone. If you are 
considering buying one of these little marvels, take the time to work with each 
device you are considering. Think about how you will use the notetaker, and try 
using each to undertake the tasks you are likely to ask your notetaker to 
perform. You will not avoid all the headaches in this way, but you will 
certainly cut down on them.

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