Just to support this thread. I think a relatively low-cost portable note-
taking device with speech output is long overdue. The idea of using a
lightweight laptop is often the most cost-effective but isn't always the
most effective strategy. Note-taking at uni is more than taking notes in
lectures. students need to jot down notes during tutorials, meetings with
fellow students on the bus, in the library, in the canteen. Imagine
having to boot up a pen and paper and probably find somewhere to plug in
every time you need to jot a quick note, date, phone number or scribble
something onto a time-table, diary, handout, photocopy etc.
The new Alphasmart Dana uses Palm OS - I wonder if there's any Palm text-
to-speech engines that might make it possible to develop on this
platform?
Ian Francis
On 30 Sep 2003 at 15:35, Andrew Hodgson wrote:
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> Hello Clare,
>
> Tuesday, September 30, 2003, 1:38:31 PM, you wrote:
>
> CD> Andrew,
>
> CD> Can you give me more info about the cheaper speech only notetakers made by
> CD> Artic Technologies and by Robotron? The student does not use Braille, and
> CD> to justify the cost of VoiceNote or PAC Mate I will have to be able to
> CD> confirm that there is no cheaper alternative available to meet his needs.
>
> Right, in that case there are a few options, the note takers from
> Robotron are no good because they require braille input. Here are
> the ones I have found:
>
> http://www.techno-vision.co.uk/artic_transtype_2000.htm
>
> The Artic transtype is probably the cheapest qwerty speech notetaker
> you will find, and is somewhat basic now but will do basic word
> processing for note taking. Email George at
> <[log in to unmask]> for the prices, but they were less than
> £1000 last time I saw them.
>
> Alternatively there are the following products:
> * Voicenote QT
> * Pacmate BNS
> * QWERTY Elba
>
> These will be more expensive, but will have a larger feature set.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Andrew.
>
> - --
> Best regards,
> Andrew Hodgson, Bromyard, Herefordshire, UK.
> mailto:[log in to unmask]
>
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