[infoshare] Re: VR Stream vs BookSense
- From: "SHARON JOYNER" <darlenjoy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <infoshare@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:43:13 -0500
Thank you, Lynn. That gives me some things to think about. Wow!! $499???
----- Original Message -----
From: Lynne
To: infoshare@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 6:29 PM
Subject: [infoshare] VR Stream vs BookSense
Hi, All.
We'll cover this in a bit more detail during the Saturday meeting but here
are some things to consider when purchasing either the Victor Reader Stream or
the BookSense.
It really comes down to what you'd like to do with the device:
the Victor Reader Stream is an excellent book and music player that handles a
good deal of text and audio formats. It's sound is exquisite (with the right
headphones).
Navigation through files is wonderfully easy as you have left and right
arrows on either side of the play button. Hold them down and you'll move
either forward or backwards in increments of time. You may also specify a
10-minute block of time to fast-forward or rewind. I find that most helpful.
If you would like or need your MS-Word documents to become portable, then the
BookSense is the way to go. the audio is terrific and Kate and Paul are quite
pleasant as speech synthesizers, albeit a bit flakey when pronouncing some
words. that last bit is purely subjective as one learns to deal with any
speech synthesizer.
My Take On it:
I love the Stream for its amazing sound quality.
I don't like Samantha or Tom for reading text.
I'm also not happy with the navigation of the Music Folder. I think they
could have made it a lot simpler. Additionally, you cannot delete an album
from the device; you must delete track by track. that's a bit annoying to me.
As stated, the BookSense XT has a radio, blutooth capability for cord-free
listening and 4 gb of internal storage. This comes at the hefty price of
$499.00 . the Standard BookSense is comparable to that of the VR Stream at
around $350.00 or so...perhaps a bit cheaper.
As I'm fortunate to have both, I'll tell you that I use them according to my
whims. Right now I'm in a BookSense frame of mind because I'm actually
listening to the radio and I love the fact that I can, if I remember to do so,
record from the radio and keep the recording forever.
Some other features of the BookSense that I enjoy are the ability to record
in mp3 format, which is a standard audio format that plays on most mp3 players
and can be copied and pasted from the device to your computer without
third-party software. At this time, the VR Stream records in a proprietary
format and you must convert the files to wave via software known as the
Humanware Companion.
And just to throw the monkey right into the wrench...the American Printing
House is now shipping their newest book reader called the BookPort Plus. Maria
and I are most interested as we began our digital book journey with the
original Book Port.
Well, I sincerely hope this has been helpful.
Enjoy what's left of this glorious weather and we hope to see you next
Saturday.
peace.
Lynne
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