Walt, a USB power is used to power some Ipods... and in fact, I just ordered one for my digital recorder the Edirol R09.
At 11:18 AM 12/27/2006, Walt Smith wrote:
Chris -
My comments are placed below your own.
hardware issues
1. USB power:
I can see no reason not to allow USB power to operate the bookport when it
is connected to a computer. In addition this would allow external battery
packs or power supplies to run the bookport without having to add a power
jack.
***
Excellent suggestion, although I'm not so sure about using an external power
supply other than the computer through the USB port. Has anyone ever
actually seen this in another device? I don't doubt that it's theoretically
possible, just haven't seen it.
***
2. If USB power is possible then why not charge batteries with it: This one
gets slightly more tricky since if you had normal batteries in the BP you
would have an issue with automatically charging via USB. A switch either
software or hardware could be added to make this possible. I have a ham
radio portable that has a menu choice that sets battery type and switches
off the charging current when normal battery pack is selected. I realize
that this suggestion does open up a support nightmare.
***
Again, an excellent suggestion. And while we're on the subject of USB, we
need to have USB 2.0 inplemented on a new hardware platform.
***
3. Add an SD slot or CF to SD converter card: CF is on it's way out. SD is
moving up and many products and companies no longer find CF viable. I have
many CF cards but the prices have probably gone as low as they will and in
some cases are starting to rise on mid to high sized cards. SD is clearly
moving up and with the release of the HC specc (up to 32GB) will take more
and more market share since the target is video and digital cameras.
***
While I firmly believe that the reports of the demise of CompactFlash are
greatly exaggerated, SD has its good points. Perhaps its worst point,
however, is size--those cards are just entirely too small and easy to lose.
It will be interesting to see what developments in the area of the NLS
digital Talking Book might lead to here, especially as we've been told that
there _will_ be a BookPort capable of playing these when they become
available next summer. I don't have anything personally against SD or some
other card technology, but I'd be concerned about the user who might possess
very limited technical or even physical skills trying to insert some of
these much smaller cards that aren't as easily defined as a CF card.
***
Software functions and issues.
1. File sort order:
This one is a real PITA! Let's say you have file names such as
3145_01.mp3
3145_02.mp3
3145_03.mp3
3149_01.mp3
3149_02.mp3
3149_03.mp3
Now you copy all of these to the BP. They should play in sequence but in
fact the last file 3149_03.mp3 will be first in the BP list. If you load
several files at different times the sequence will be almost in order from
each load session but the order issue remains within each group and overall
causes files to play in scrambled order if you use automatic file advance.
This is a major gripe since if you have a book in chapters, one per file,
and the files are not sorted by name correctly you can't read the book from
start to finish without user intervention.
***
This is not a major issue for me. It's extremely simple to get such
sequential files to load on the BP in their correct order--just select them
on the computer in Windows Explorer from the bottom (last file) up rather
than from the top (first file) down. If/when I want to re-sort a folder's
contents on the BP, I simply use a card reader attached to my computer, dump
the files from the card to the computer, then dump them all back.
***
2. Playlists:
This one would in part solve item 1 but would just be nice. The ability to
have a simple text file that would step the BP through files in the order
the user wants would be great. Also playlists in the .m3u format are almost
universal. It would also allow applications such as Winamp to generate
lists to go along with the files you send to the BP.
***
Totally unimportant to me and not really relevant to the fundamental purpose
of the device as a reading system. I don't use the BP as an iPod and don't
ever expect to do so and, as indicated in my previous response, it's already
possible to load sequentially titled files so that they play in their proper
order without having to rename them.
***
3. file titles from ID tags: ID v2.0 tags for .mp3 and .mp4 along with many
other file types including .wav are industry standard and almost universal.
I think the BP should be able to read the file name or any one of the major
ID tag items such as artist, title, album, through a user menu selection. A
combination of these would be even better. Example Artist, "book title",
title "Chapter number and title" would be much more useful than just an
alphabet soup of a file name such as THC_b1c01.
***
See above comments.
***
4. ability to read text type PDF: That one doesn't need much elaboration.
A PDF with text rather than picture based pages should be readable without
jumping through translation hoops.
***
Quite likely not possible because of the nature of a raw PDF file. That's
why translation to text is required in the first place. Also, bear in mind
that there will *always* be formatting issues with some PDF documents that
make their reading and interpretation difficult. This is all due to the
manner in which the original document was designed and coded by its author
and has nothing whatever to do with the technology that might be implemented
on the BookPort. Look at the contents of a raw PDF document with a text
editor like Notepad and you'll see just how far from a "text" file it really
is. While the ability to just load a PDF file to the Book Port and read it
would be nice, I think that in the long run, translation to text on the
computer first remains the best way to deal with these files, especially
since you can't download a PDF document directly to the BP, anyway--that is,
there's no direct download functionality on the BP and I personally wouldn't
want to have to pay for such.
***
5. Better sample rates for memos: Nice to see 22,050 mono 16 bit. Huge
improvement in quality and with the size of CF cards these days should not
be to much trouble for many users. I run several 4gb cards and have at
least two 2gb and one 1gb for stand-by.
***
One of those "it would be nice, but is it *really* all that important"
issues. Again, for what it was intended to do, the memo feature works just
fine. If a user wants to record a classroom lecture or produce a podcast,
this isn't the device for doing so, anyway. Like you said, now that CF cards
are so much larger than they were when the BP was originally designed,
however, an improved sampling rate probably should be implemented. Another
memo-related thing that would *really* be nice would be the ability to copy
selected text from the document being read into a memo. If I were a student
preparing a paper on the novel I'm reading, such a feature would be worth
its weight in gold to me--I could almost literally write the paper using the
memo feature.
***
--
Walt Smith - Clearwater, FL
Walt@xxxxxxxxxx
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