RE: Announcing the Orion Smart book
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 21:30:37 -0500
We can and have I won't tell you which one we chose because you will have
to wait and hear it either at CSUN or online. I will say though I agree
with you I like Kendra.
ken
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Phil Vlasak
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 9:16 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
Hi Ken,
I checked out the IVONA voices.
http://www.ivona.com/studio.php
I liked Kendra - American English the best.
I hope you can choose which voice to use on the Orion Smart book.
Phil
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:25 PM
Subject: RE: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>I understand your argument and know it has merit. I also know there is a
> market for these devices. The one thing that all the cool touch screens
> do
> not have is a quick and easy input method. I personally use both an
> IPhone
> and a G2 right now. The main thing I hate about both is having to write
> documents and take notes. You can record with them fine but if you're
> trying to use it as a document or even a good messaging system the input
> is
> terrible. This new device improves on the input by 100 % and the output
> I
> will leave that up to the people as they try it. I can tell you this
> though
> Ivona speech engines are the stuff dreams are made of.
>
>
> Look we can all argue that one thing is better than the other. We can all
> say it's too expensive even though I am working on the project and don't
> know the cost yet. One thing we all have to agree on is that the more
> accessible devices the better.
>
> Ken
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dale Leavens
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:10 PM
> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>
> But so far we don't have the price for the braille display.
>
> What I quoted was the current hardware as shown on the LevelStar Site.
>
> Unless they have some new refreshable braille technology the Orion will be
> a
>
> lot more than two grand and you can have braille on any number of devices
> these days.
>
> I agree. A netbook and at least you have a fully compatible word
> processor,
> one used by the rest of the world assuming one shares documents with the
> rest of the world.
>
> for a hundred bucks you can buy a 32 GB card for your Stream. Modern SSD
> drives are used these days maybe the Orion will upgrade to a solid state
> drive. Even that on the Icon wouldn't justify $1,300.
>
> I will say that I approve the use of braille but for the speed of speech
> it
> will have to get a bunch cheaper before I'll be buying int.
>
> I guess there is a market but I don't see it.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alex Midence" <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 7:00 PM
> Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>
>
>> Well, if it does braille output, it's got my vote sight unseen. At
>> the price it's selling for, it looks like you can have a little
>> braille display for under 2k. That's really cool. I still can't
>> afford it, mind, but it's really cool. I wonder if you can use it as
>> an external speech synth and/or braille display for a screen reader on
>> a laptop or desktop. That would be really nifty. The note taker
>> stuff isn't really that exciting to me. I can grab a $150 netbook off
>> of craigslist and load up soemthing like Vinux on there and I have a
>> powerful note taker right there and then. You don't even need all the
>> stuff Vinux comes with pre-installed really. All you really need is
>> Pico, abook, tudu, mplayer and Lynx running on something with speakup
>> installed and you got a decent note taker. Couple of megs more gets
>> you emacspeak and you have something that is just as powerful as any
>> word processor out there, imho. Add a menu feature of some kind which
>> launches what you want at the press of a key and you don't even need
>> to have the command line come up to bring up your stuff. That braille
>> display and that speech synth though are very attention grabbing for
>> me. Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking all the nice apps featured
>> on there. I just can't see myself going into debt for them when I can
>> get a comparable set of them for ffree on a much much cheaper machine.
>>
>> For daisy, I have a victor reader which also stores songs. I don't
>> need 40 gigs of songs. IN fact, I have a 2 gig mini flash card for my
>> music and an 8 gb one for my audio books. Podcasts, I get through my
>> android phone and stitcher but a braille display, that for under 2
>> grand is not to be sneezed at.
>>
>> Alex M
>>
>> On 3/9/11, Dale Leavens <dleavens@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Well, I don't get it.
>>>
>>> The LevelStar Site doesn't give much information on the Icon, look like
>>> you
>>> don't get any input other than audio without the docking station which
>>> means
>>> $1,300 for the Icon and $600 for the keyboard, $1,900 altogether. For
>>> that
>>> you get 8 more gigs of hard drive than you get on an iPhone.
>>>
>>> I presume you can do input in some way outside of the docking station
>>> but
>>> they don't tell you anything about that.
>>>
>>> Having braille output albeit only 18 cells will add to the capability of
>>> course but it seems redundant to me to have yet another isolated note
>>> taker.
>>>
>>> The iPhone and come to that the iPod touch already does all that stuff
>>> and
>>> more for less.
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Littlefield, Tyler
>>> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Cc: Ken Perry
>>> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 5:36 PM
>>> Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>>>
>>>
>>> I seen that! And even with no price tag, it's already making my wallet
>>> clench up in fear.
>>> On 3/9/2011 1:39 PM, Ken Perry wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I can now show you what I am helping to work on. Here is the
>>> announcement that was put out today.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
//www.freelists.org/post/accesscomp/Fw-icondiscuss-A-Glimpse-Of-The-Lev
> elStar-Orion-SmartBooks-At-CSUN-2011
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ty
>>>
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