Well I have had my Pocket a week now and it is one beautiful little
marvel. Here is a preliminary short appraisal. First, let me mention
a couple of other products that you are more familiar with -- the PTR 2
and the Stream. I heard that as well as being a player the Pocket was
going to incorporate most of the more powerful recording capability of
the PTR 2. In short , it does. And the package is smaller in all 3
dimensions than the Stream. It feels silky and extremely sensual just
to hold this diminutive little item in your hand.
It is a powerful recorder with all of the same recording modes that you
are used to on the PTR2. You can enable or disable auto recording level
and while recording you can choose to enable monitoring of the signal or
audible level annunciation on the fly. You can also add headings on the
fly or after the fact. While recording you can monitor battery level,
confirm that you are recording (not paused) and obtain time recorded and
time remaining information. Editing is very limited, basically to
adding and removing heading marks . However, it features two powerful
new processing options that should compliment its ability to move files
from SD to thumb drive and from thumb drive to SD. These permit you to
process files that you create so they will play on other players and to
process material from other recorders for editing on the pocket. I
have yet to explore these features but they look promising.
The unit has Only a single input jack but it is switchible for either
microphone or line level. I have always been annoyed by the input
characteristics of the preamp and built in microphone on my PTR 2. No
such problem exists on the pocket. In fact I love the built in
microphone.
Playback on the Pocket can be navigated by character, word, phrase
paragraph, book mark, heading levels, time and a new method by
percentage of the total length. Of course which of these options is
available to you is predetermined by the format of the file you are
reading. The pocket features both a built in male and female text to
speech voice. The female is the default and it is excellent.
The buttons on the Pocket are not too small -- its been cold out and I
have been able to operate it while wearing leather gloves. Speaking of
buttons and switches it has 24 just 5 less than the PTR 2. Even so an
operation like adding a heading mark to an existing file which has a
dedicated key on the PTR 2 takes exactly the same number of keystrokes
on the Pocket even though the option is selected off a menu. This is
great engineering!
Time to list desired improvements. The most obvious is the lack of a
case. It comes with a pouch but it really needs a skin to protect it
while it is being used. Also, when you receive it you get only a
print quick start
guide and a CD. Its up to you as a totally blind person to struggle
through getting started. And if you do not have a computer you are kind
of stuck. Of course the lack of a box running Microsoft's finest is
not one of my personal deficiencies but I resisted reading the manual
on the computer -- I was too eager to start using the pocket. As soon
as I found someone to assist me with the quick start guide I copied the
manual from the CD to a thumb drive and from the thumb drive to the
pockets SD card. A Braille quick start guide or cassette guide like the
one I received with my PTR 2 from IRTI would be a great improvement. A
feature that I appreciated in version 2 of the PTR software was an
annunciation of available recording time that changed respectively as
you cycled through the various recording qualities/modes. On the Pocket
this has been replaced with the respective bandwidth spec. This is much
less functional and of little use to the average user. Navigation by
time on the PTR2 can be set to 1 minute and ten minute increments which
I have grown to love. On the Pocket it can not be fixed at a specific
value and instead changes on the fly but always starts at ten seconds
and increases as you hold down the control. I find this a little
cumbersome. Lastly the Pocket lacks the ability to create page marks.
I actually regularly use this feature on my PTR 2. Not for page
numbering but as another powerful way of marking information for future
reference. It is a reference mark that is saved when you backup.
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