[access-uk] Re: Book Courier Vs Bookworm
- From: "James O'Dell" <jamesodell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 10:39:47 +0100
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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