Dan: That's great. If they've got the money, we've got the Book Ports. (LOL). Pamela Rader, TECHNICAL SUPPORT American Printing House For The Blind 1839 Frankfort Ave. Louisville, KY 40206 PHONE: 1-800-223-1839, Ext. 307 >>> DanFlasar@xxxxxxx 03/16/07 11:17AM >>> Hi y'all, First off, I probably won't buy the BP2 but instead will wait for the BP3 and pay extra bucks for more features, although the prospect of being able to read NLS digital books is awfully tempting. As far as batteries go, I've been using rechargeables for 25 years now and have saved a substantial amount of money - not to mention keeping an awful lot of extremely toxic chemicals out of the environment. Chargers are really cheap now, they take at most an hour and buying 3 or 4 4-battery sets, you will always have all the power you need. Just have your sets charged up when you travel, which is as easy to do as packing non-chargeable's. Do you really want to pay airport prices for batteries anyway? So I applaud APH for taking that next step and offering rechargeable power packs. The new generation last a lot longer than regular batteries, give a more consistent power curve and will save you a lot of money over several years. I like the idea of the BP being thinner, but I sure wouldn't want it to get celphone size. I like the idea of a speaker and an on-off switch. As for double-talk, I've only been visually impaired for 12 years and did start with DecTalk. I'm grateful these amazing technologies came along to allow me to keep my job. Doubletalk did take me a little time to get used to - about 10 minutes, actually. I'm perfectly happy with it. A few months ago, I was listening to my BP on the subway and a young lady nearby, who was plugged into an iPod, asked me what I was listening to. "It looks like an iPod that was designed by NASA in 1974", she laughed. So did I - pretty funny. But when I told her what it did, her eyes literally bugged out. She thought it was absolutely cool and wanted to know if she could get one. She liked the idea of BookShare and being able to store and read a large # of books on a small, portable unit. She'd be out of luck on BookShare. This leads me to a question. Certainly anybody can buy a Bookport - there are no visual or learning disability requirements for owning one as there are for membership in NLS or BookShare. But heck, there are tons of books available on-line - such as Project Gutenberg. One of my clients at the medical school, a doc in physical therapy asked me if there was a way for her to scan in and hear her case and study briefings so she could listen to them while she ran or biked (which I do). I'm going to give her a demo of K1000, transfer the text file to the BP and show her what it sounds like. There are a LOT of people who would love to be able to do this kind of thing. So, Pam, anybody can buy a Bookport, right? Dan ************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.