[infoshare] comparison

  • From: "Lynne" <superlynne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <infoshare@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:14:41 -0400

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 
Book Sense.
 
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
 
 
 

Other related posts: