> We want to buy some laptops for dylexic students to use in class and to take
> home with them. We think that important features are clear screen, good
> spellchecking, reliability, IBM compatible but not necessarily very powerful
> i.e. a good word processor but not necessarily more than that. As students
> have them on permanent loan, cost is a very important factor!
There are several options here.
Something like the Alphasmart Pro keyboard will give a portable text
entry facility. It has no spell check or fancy features. After using
it on the move you simply connect it to the PC keyboard socket
and transfer to your chosen package. Then you use the features
of your chosen package to produce the finished article. It costs UKP 199.
Next you have portable Wordprocessors of the type made by Canon and
Sharp, among others. These are self contained with a printer built
in and often with a spell check facility and floppy disk drive with IBM
compatible format (but the file is usually straight ascii text). You
can find these in retailers such as Argos. From memory, cost is from a
few hundred to about UKP 700.
Finally you have fully fledged IBM PC's in notebook format. A new
Pentium notebook with TFT screen, CD ROM etc will cost about twice
the desktop equivalent. UKP 2000 rather than UKP 1000.
If you're not too concerned about screen quality and having the
Pentium processor you can get some bargains in Morgans, New Oxford
Street. They sell remaindered and bankrupt stock (they have a lot of
Escom stuff at the moment). However, be cautious, not every item is
the bargain it seems. Non-standard memory & associated upgrade prices,
the need for obscure video drivers when moving to 95 etc. can all put
the dampers on a nice looking package. Our experience of buying
'outgoing' technology puts us off this approach. We bought some XT's
when AT's were in vogue and they quickly became unattractive. I
believe this will be the case for anybody buying a 486 now.
Regards
Paul Dilley, Technical Manager
Computer Centre for People with Disabilities, University of Westminster
** The London & South East Regional Access Centre **
Tel: +44 171 911 5000 Fax: +44 171 911 5162 http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccpd/
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