bookport usability?

[Kirk Reiser]

"Paul Migliorelli (+1 3 0 3 5 1 9 5 3 4 6" <paulmigs at migliorelli.org> writes:

> Howdy Kirk.  Have you heard of any way to use bookport yet for the
> transfer software needed?  Didn't know if it was something we could use
> yet since I gather the transferware is still win only, and I gather you
> need the ware and cannot simply put files on it?

Hi Paul:  I'll answer what I know of your questions here rather than
in the private mail you sent me.  As I said in a previous message here
you can certainly use e-texts on the bookport providing you place them
in the notes directory.  I have read two complete books this way and
it worked just great.  It kept track of where I left off reading when
I stopped or moved to diferent files and it kept bookmarks I set.  It
doesn't have quite as good of navigation control as if you had run it
through the transfer program but I didn't find that detracted at all
from my reading pleasure.  If one wanted it would be easy enough to
process a file before loading it onto the unit by making each line be
sentence based and removing all of the blank lines and such.

In your private mail you said that you believe the transfer program
convert the mp3 to .wav before downloading them.  I don't know for
sure about that.  My reading of the bookport manual didn't seem to
indicate that.  It appears to me that it could play native mp3 with no
prior processing.  If someone has a bookport that they have loaded
mp3s onto it would be an easy enough thing to check, just go to it
from my computer after connecting it and look through the
directories.  In a way I hope it doesn't convert them before loading
them because if it does that means you won't be able to load a lot of
wave files on to the device before filling it.  That of course depends
on how large of compact flash you have but still a 512mb cf could not
hold even one standard compact disk worth of audio.

  Kirk


-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061