Yes, David, I'm looking forward to mine, but probably this won't come
now till after my break away over Christmas and New Year.
I gather post codes aren't featured yet ... but here's hoping they're
not too long in coming.
Did you have to purchase the card separately?
Have you tried the recording facility yet?
You know what, there's only one Santa in this house and he/she is doing
pretty well snaffling up the various Christmas gifts I keep seeing! <Smiles>
Carol P
On 12/8/2017 1:56 PM, David Griffith wrote:
I have been in possession of my Victor Reader Trek for 6 days now and whilst there are things which could be tweaked , especially in relation to GPS in general I think this piece of kit is fantastic and has instantly become my most used piece of Access tech. I thought this was important to say as Humanware botched the launch of the project with the wrong maps in the UK and received bad publicity on the lists – for which some was deserved but most I think unfair.
Rather than writing a long review I will put some bullet points and answer further questions if people have them. Obviously This is only my experience.
* Initially onf first use the GPS acquisition was extremely slow,
Humanware should warn people about this- but now it is lightning
fast compared to the old Trekker. In practice I find that as I
have GPS always running in the background even whilst using it as
a Radio or book Player the availability of GPS and orientation is
instantaneous as soon as I switch the Trek from book reading to
Orientation mode. I am really enjoying this feature.
* The ability to have GPS running all the time is only possible
because the battery life on this device is so far fantastic.
Yesterday I had GPS running all day, went on 2 short walks,
listened to 3 radio plays, 4 podcasts, some of my Talking Books
and also used the internet Radio feature. I did not have to
recharge the battery before going to bed.
* The volume and audio quality through earphones is a massive
improvement compared to the Second Gen Stream. As I am deaf I
could only comfortably use the Second Generation Stream with a
portable amplifier. I can happily use the Trek without any
secondary amplifier. I rang Humanware to thank them for this
improvement. Humanware confirmed that they had consciously tried
to make the Trek more suitable for people with hearing
impairment. When so many Android devices are crippling their
volume output at the moment it is a relief to come across a
device going in the other direction.
* The Trek is much snappier than the second generation stream. I
have a class 10 128GB card in it with over 80GB of content but it
is loading content from this card without any noticeable delay,
even on startup.
* The speed with which content is downloaded if vastly surperior to
the Second generation stream which used to crawl with updates and
downloads. The Trek seems like any modern device now in the speed
in which it downloads content.
* The expanded memory means that I do not have any issues with
Podcasts filling up memory any more.
* I personally am very happy that you no longer need to use Daniel
as the GPS voice, though this is still an option. You can instead
use Rachel which I think is an Ivona voice.
In terms of improvements still needed I think the maps need some work, or rather the software needs tweaking. In genral the GPS seems more accurate but too often it is announcing a intersection when you are right on the intersection and on too many occasions just after you have crossed the road. It is better to have too much warning of an innntersection coming up rather than too little. I have fed this back to Humanware.
Humanware rang me yesterday to say the case for the device will be delivered Monday. I think that they should have delayed dispatch until Maps and Cases were sorted properly. Also I read yesterday that the crucial first firmware update will be coming now at the end of the month and not in January.
This update will apparently
* Improve the Maps function
* Turn on the FM Radio Chip and provide an FM Radio Service
* Turn on Audible Support so that the trek can read Audible Books
natively like the previous models.
David Griffith
*
My Blind Access and Guide dog Blog
http://dgriffithblog.wordpress.com/
My Blind hammer Blog
https://www.westhamtillidie.com/authors/blind-hammer/posts
