Victor Reader Stream: Initial Thoughts

[leadinglabbie]

Just got it today--I'm still figuring it out.



My mom commented on its appearance. Apparently, it looks way cooler than the Book Port. And I'm excited about its bookmarking features and the ease with which it should handle RFB&D books.

And I really, really am going to enjoy its recording feature. I think I need to record accounting, and the Stream will make decent recordings of class, which I will then be able to speed up and even to bookmark.

But there are some cons:

• The lowest volume level is quite loud with decent headphones. There's no getting around the necessity of using an attenuator cable.
  
  
• Unlike the Book Port, the Stream does not come with a memory card by default. Seems a bit tacky to require this extra purchase when a memory card is absolutely required to use the machine. (Well, I mean, you can use it with a USB drive--more on that below--and you'll be able to use it with NLS cartridges eventually, but each of those requires separate purchases, too.) No problem since I have SD cards, but it just seems like it ought to come with one, and this should be reflected in the list price.
  
  
• The "random" mode, which I was hoping would let me really use this thing as a music player, seems not to hold when you go from one folder to another. Also, it doesn't "randomize" between folders. It will randomly play all the tracks in one folder and then move to the next folder. It did seem to retain its randomness when I went to folder #2, but when I went to #3, it was back on "normal" play mode again. I don't remember if I did something inbetween to make this happen, but I don't think I did, unless I changed books and it defaults to normal play. But who cares, because why would you just want to shuffle the stuff in one folder at a time?
  
  
• The USB feature is very slow--I suppose this is to be expected, since we're essentially dealing with a PDA here. But I haven't actually gotten it to play a book on a USB source.
  
  
• And the biggest con of all: You can't independently adjust the speed of the TTS and the audio playback! This is really, really annoying. Because if I set the speed to normal (which I have to do to listen to music), the TTS is much slower than I'd like when reading file names. And if I'm listening to something with TTS, I *must* remember to set the speed to normal, or my music sounds...weird. This wouldn't even be so bad if there were a quick way to do this. But you must first use the toggle key to set the up and down arrows to "speed," and then you can't just jump to normal speed--you have to press the arrow once for each change you want to make. It does helpfully beep when you reach the default.
  

Disclaimer: I need to really familiarize myself with the machine. But I'm left wondering why all devices for blind people have to basically suck in some way, shape or form. It's like...there's just sloppiness when these things are designed.

I'm keeping it, because I need it as a study aid. I guess that's its main purpose, and if it does that well, that'll be great. But I'm kinda disappointed. I hope some of these issues will be addressed in future upgrades. And that actually reminds me of one very positive thing about the Stream: It seems they'll be following the HW Canada tradition of providing free software upgrades on their products.

So, basically, there's a lot of potential. But I think I might by a Book Port II if it's out by the time I working again.