What's a braille display that _works_?

[Mario Lang]

"John J. Boyer" <director at chpi.org> writes:

> How much does the Braille Star cost?

Two years ago, I payed 6.600,- EUR.

> Is the company good at service?

My local reseller (transdanubia) has its own hardware repair
guy, and so far, I didn't have any problems with service.  At one point,
the backplane of the device kind of went nuts and the last 8 cells
on the right side of the display stopped working.  I got it repaired
and shipped back in just a few days.

> Does it have a braille keyboard?

Yes and no.  The display has all in all 16 navigation buttons,
and 10 of them can be used as a braille keyboard.  You can
switch between "Input Mode" and "Command Mode" in BRLTTY.
However, my personal feeling is that those keys aren't
really perfect for people who only use braille input.  OTOH, I
don't do this myself, since I am much faster when using
a standard QWERTZ keyboard, so your milage may vary.

> I am interested because, although my present Braille Lite 40 is
> doing nicely, I am not sure how long I can continue getting it
> repaired by a good company.
Hearing you own a Braille Lite 40 makes me belief you'll like
the Braille Star, since it is a notetaker too if you want.
The display can be used stand-alone, has 4MB of RAM for
text-documents, and a simple editor built-in.  You can even use it
either with a standard keyboard (just connect the PS/2 connector
on the backside), or with the braille keyboard built-in.

They ship it with a laptop-sided standard keyboard which nicely
fits into the carrying-bag you also get.  So you can even
go on a trip and write a long article using such a keyboard, if you prefer.

-- 
CYa,
  Mario | Debian Developer <URL:http://debian.org/>
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