What do people think about the braille note evolve?

I have to agree with Justin, while the GeekCalm seems like an interesting setup, I don't see very many people doing this. That sounds quite literally like a niche market, for the true geeks out there. I think most people would rather just have a laptop, that they can fold in store away when not needed, take out and unfold to use, rinse and repeat. Granted, you are correct, that screens are expensive. The GeekCome, including taxes, is just shy of $1300, and the accessories plus taxes, bring the price up to just a touch over $1600 (USD). From your post above, just shy of $400 get you less storage, but a dedicated screen.
Hats off to you for coming up with an alternative portable computing method, I just don't think I would ever want to do this, but to each their own... 🤠

I've used the Braille Note mpower in 5th grade until7th grade, then used the apex at the tail end of 7th grade until I graduated high school in 2018. There were numerous times where the word processor would crash on me because it couldn't keep up with me typing fast. Seeing how the evolve is just plain old windows with presumably some modified menus or whatever, I assume with Word as the word processor, that it doesn't crash. As a bonus, if I am thinking of this correctly, you can get the voices from the apex on the evolve through the Best Speech NVDA addon, or the Eloquence voices you can buy for windows. As another bonus, if you have an interactive fiction interpreter, you could basicly play those old games you would have played on the old Windows CE braille notes. There is one concern, and someone I was talking to hopes that windows isn't locked down to the point where the end user can't update it. Overall, it would be cool to own, and if I can't do that, it would be cool to have some time to where I can look at it.

There will be a webinar about the BrailleNote Evolve on April 7 at 8:00 PM EST. https://bits.groups.io/g/events/message/479

My thoughts on the BrailleNote Evolve are probably the same from others on this forum, so here it goes.

I just received a promotional email this morning from Humanware regarding their BrailleNote Evolve. It is great they've integrated their braille notetaker experience into Windows 11 and the Keysoft experience is still around. However there are some things I am concerned about with this device. Yes there's NVDA support, however they heavily emphasize the fact that It comes with JAWS, the most expensive screen reading package to date. According to Humanware, your new device comes with six months of JAWS, and that's it. From my understanding, the user will continue to pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, to keep their JAWS / braille first experience up-to-date. This was not an issue with the BrailleNote mPower or Apex, or any other braille notetaker I've used over the years before finally using my laptop and phone to do everything. For instance, I didn't have to pay thousands just to keep my Braille Sens U2 functioning normally. Regarding the BrailleNote Evolve, even though I said earlier it has NVDA support, how well will that work? I cannot efficiently navigate my computer with a Braille keyboard alone as opposed to using a standard QWERTY keyboard, which in my opinion would make this braille first experience useless to me. In addition, has Humanware restricted the use of Keysoft to those who use JAWS? If so, if I wanted to buy a notetaker for myself for some kind of reason I definitely wouldn't be going with that option. In that case I'd rather go with an Android approach such as the Braille Sense 7 or the Orbit Speak.

So, what I can say about a Braille first approach is that it's not too bad. What I'm wondering is if there will be some sort of NVDA addon made for it, to increase compatibility? If so, what would stop me from just throwing that same addon on to my ElBraille?
I was able to get a pretty good Braille first setup going using the ElBraille with NVDA instead of JAWS, but it took a lot of work, and would have not been possible at all without an external keyboard, be it bluetooth or corded. If they made an addon, and with that addon, added in a bunch of Braille shortcuts, or were to override the default NVDA Braille shortcuts for the same ones used with JAWS, this could make the switch a little less hard for a lot of users. I made it happen due to sheer stubbornness, and because I didn't really care for JAWS in the first place, but a lot of people probably would have decided it wasn't worth it.

JAWS will be completely optional. It sounds like they're using a heavily customized version of NVDA to power the experience, but you'll also have full access to the power of a real Windows environment to do anything you want. Hopefully you'll be able to install the upstream version of NVDA to work in Windows, as I have a suspicion the version they use to power Keysoft will always be slightly behind.

Interesting thought. Would end up making it like samsung talkback vs google talkback if they did it that way, in which case, it would not be ideal. Think they'd do better releasing an addon, but doubt they would, for that very reason, wanting to keep it closed source and inaccessible to people with other similar products, because rather than help you get the best out of stuff you already have, they want you to buy the new latest and greatest. Now granted, if I had those kind of funds, I'd love to, but when I already have a perfectly good laptop, plus the ElBraille, that's gunna be a Nope.

On the latest webinar, they said that their version of NVDA is just standard NVDA plus a few NVDA add-ons. They seemed to imply that you can just update NVDA yourself to the latest version since it’s just a standard NVDA install. They would need to keep their add-ons up to date, but since NVDA only breaks add-on compatibility once per year on .1 updates, this should not be too difficult to do especially since NVDA has betas they can test against before the official release. They also said the Evolve will get standard Windows updates like any other PC. Also the Evolve will ship with 2026.1 of NVDA and they are already testing with that version I think, so when it comes out it will have a version of NVDA that has barely been released.

If that's the case, and they have addons, wonder how hard it would be to get those and put them on another device like I said earlier. I was hoping that was the route they would go.

On today's webinar, they said the battery life will be 5 to 7 hours. I think on the very first webinar they did, they said it would be 8 hours so this is lower than I expected and lower than most other notetakers. Although I suppose for Windows laptops this isn't too bad, although ARM laptops and MacBooks get a lot more.

I honestly don't understand why they didn't just use a snapdragon x elete or other arm x64 processor. It would've given the device more battery life, better thermal efficiency, allowed for a lighter design, and would still be able to run x86 apps. So going with arm would've been the obvious choice in my book. I get that x86 is still the dominant architecture but it won't be for much longer. I'd say most windows users will be on arm64 devices by 2040 assuming the world hasn't ended before then lol

Most Intel laptops get more than 5 hours. And this device is powering a Braille display, not a big visual screen. It says to me they're skimping on battery capacity. Whether it is de to some space limitation, saving cost, or both. I agree I would probably have also chosen Arm. This device was possibly laid out on paper before Arm was truly relevant though, and Windows has a big nearly 20 year stigma of not living up to hype of running on Arm to overcome. So if this was initially conceptualized in 2022 or 2023 I can understand why Intel seemed the safer choice.

Not ARM for this will be a mistake IMO.

I agree it would have been better for them to use ARM processors for battery life. During the webinar, they said that they could not get access to the highest performance Snapdragon X Elite processors, and the ones that they did have access to were lower performance. I'm not sure why this is though because many laptop makers can use Snapdragon processors, not just a small set of companies. Also the Evolve most likely uses a first generation Intel Ultra, not a second or third generation, so maybe they chose the processor early and took a while to design the device after that?

I'm interested to see what they said about the Evolve in the webinar. Is it archived anywhere?

Now, what I found interesting in the webinar on Monday (though I had to leave early so would also be interested in a recording) was the emphasis on transition. It was as though the headline was: this device is designed to get someone to transition from the safe world of Keysoft to the mainstream world of Windoes, for employment purposes. The message was very much to students and teachers. What I would have asked if I had been there was: what do you have to ssay to me - a professional who has used Windows for many years and is as comfortable in the notetaker world as in the Windows world? what do you have to say to me, a leader, manager and lawyer with no interest in the transition rationale? Now, don't get me wrong, the answer was hinted at; but if I were to buy something like this i would want Humanware to address my constituency directly. It's in their interests. I, and blind professionals like me, have the funds to purchase this device with no need to rely on state funding or grants. I want Humanware to talk directly to me about why I should. What tangible advantages are there? I don't want to have to infer it. Important as students, class teachers and less competent users undoubtedly are, let's hear more from Humanware about the professional use case and the USPs from a professional perspective. If there aren't any, say so and I will respect you all the more for your honesty.

There will always be a place, I think, for a relatively primative notetaker. I'm talking about one with a wordprocessor, book reader, calculator, clock, file manager, and not much else - no, not even the ability to go online. The Brailliant BI20X is excellent in this regard, although I wish the clock app had a stopwatch, timer and chess clock. In an office environment, sometimes due to data protection laws we need to take handwritten notes of confidential conversations; or at least, my sighted colleagues do. I'm fine with the Brailliant provided I take my notes in BRF. Why? answer is because of its inability to go online, so there's no chance of these files being hacked into or anything like that. For the avoidance of doubt, I do not upload them using a computer either - not if they are confidential notes. The pad and paper, of which the Brailliant is the equivalent, is still a must in certain corporate settings. So the evolve couldn't replace my Brailliant in that regard.

PS: yes I know the Brailliant can go online to download certain library books, but not from any library in which most of the UK population is interested. Still no RNIB Newsagent, for example.

I have the 40, my friend purchased a 20.
Why HW thought it was a good idea to inclue full sd card slot only on the 20 along with the usb port and only usb on the 40! This is beyond me.
Yes, HW has given it just the right set of features imo, not nothing, but not too much. It is a great device.
I'd bet people who have the mantis use the notetaker much more than those without. Or it's just me. In any case it's possible to connect a keyboard via bluetooth on BI too. And I think the mantis doesn't have any sound output though, which is honestly a shame, this would have been the perfect dumn note taker with both braille and speech and a keyboard!
I also dream to one day have something like monarch or dotpad x with a keyboard, even though I am not sure about the phisicality of such device :)
All in all, BrailleNote evolve seems way more interesting than the brailleSense 7 if the minimum / maximum they can support is one android update in 5 years from 15 to whatever.
They should have stuck to the braille aspect only as their displays seem otherwise good. But sensePlayer looks better than the stream 3 software wise, I think it's a great competition to the orbit player.

The NFB Access On podcast just published their review of the Evolve. It's worth a listen.

IMO Jonathan Mosen is a blindness celebrity -- what we would now days call an influencer. He's reviewed this kind of tech for a long time, and has worked directly with both of the companies that made the most popular notetakers in the 2000s. That, to me, gives him some credibility, but I came away thinking his review of the BNE wasn't exactly glowing.

There's a lot of cool stuff in there for the geeks among us, like he name dropped the actual processor that's in the BNE. Spoiler alert, it's a Meteor Lake chip. I would've hoped that, given how much it costs, that they could've at least put in a Lunar Lake chip if they were going to go Intel, although as others have said, specs were probably decided on back in 2023 or early 2024.

He also had a good discussion with Hw themselves, allowing them to respond to some of his concerns, and I hope they can improve things over time.

I wouldn't get the Evolve with a Braille keyboard. If I need a laptop again and consider an all-in-one Braille device, I will see what the QWERTY version of the BNE has to offer, or the optima, if either of them actually see the light of day given the memory and storage crisis making all computers more expensive right now. I find it interesting that none of the AT companies are talking about that, and I wonder if the prices of things like the BNE, BS7 etc. have the higher cost of memory already factored in, or if they will go up even more.

You??? Are listening to an influencer???
Say it ain't so!!! 😭

OK, all kidding aside, thank you for the update. It is appreciated. 🙂

I also listened to that Access On review and I'm seriously disappointed to hear my biggest fear realised: KeySoft is a mere skin, an application launcher and add-ons that together provide an inferior facsimile of the KeySoft experience only so long as you're using NVDA.

Such a crying shame. I could overlook practically everything else, excepting perhaps the hopeless battery life—yes, even the price, which is always gloriously outrageous because these things are sold to agencies more than to individuals so they can get away with it, whatever the vendor says—if it weren't for this terrible choice to hole-fill using a clumsy macro environment instead of the biggest, you might say keynote, feature of the BrailleNote family, which is the self-voiced and self-Brailled KeySoft environment. And yes, I am aware of the beautiful irony that Mr Mosen is the one to articulate this complaint, which I agree with completely: he, of course, turned coat to work for Freedom Scientific when it became clear that KeySoft wasn't going to be enough without access to a mainstream Windows platform. We clearly need both, but Humanware only seems to deliver one or the other.

Yes indeed, look to Blazie for the future, a blindness layer running on an open platform, but there's still access to Writer, Firefox and Thunderbird if you need them. Humanware could have chosen this path, too, if they had wanted to open up their Linux-powered Brailliant displays, but again, no. I absolutely understand the frustration of not being able to do anything you want on a device, and God knows I've filed enough complaints over the years about classic KeySoft, but really, they've got the wrong end of the stick here, IMO. I still have my Apex and use it every now and again, particularly when travelling, and while it annoys me that the only port I still use today is the SD card slot, and the device never goes online because it becomes unstable when it does, it nonetheless brings terrific joy to me just by doing what it does well, like notes, browsing HTML files offline, reading text files and books (Victor still wasn't very good though by this stage), doing some basic calculations, looking up dictionary words and thesaurus entries, telling time and date if you remember to correct clock drift every now and again, and, last but not least, of course, playing Z-code Interactive Fiction. No shell required, all-included, with perfect Braille input and output. It's true, you don't realise what you've lost until it's gone, and I don't think Evolve will bring it back without a rethink of KeySoft, hopefully, when they do, with an SDK so people can add features to it themselves. But I'm dreaming now …

Don't worry, it won't be long before Humanware, Vispero/Freedom, or someone else creates the same scripts to let the almighty shark reign supreme on the device.
I listened to the review from Access On and agree with the vast majority of it. We'll see how things "evolve" from this point. The good news is they're using a mainstream platform that isn't locked down in any way, and most updates appear to be handled the exact same way they would on a standard Windows laptop, so I give them a ton of credit for that. This is the most open AT device we've ever seen with to my knowledge the best hardware other than the BT Speak/Braille, but I have problems with those products as well.

For me, the real killer here was that it was neither one thing, nor the other. Keysoft is there, sort of; but it needs the screenreader and when you dig a little deeper it isn't really Keysoft. windows is there and you can forget all about Keysoft if you want, except that I didn't really want to do that and I wanted the efficiency of Keysoft combined with the power of Windoes, when I needed it. The battery life is, and always has been, a USP of brailleNoet; not anymore, it would seem. I also have to say that I found the response from Humanware didn't really deal directly with the points jonathan raised. The limitations of the processor were not dealt with directly, particularly from an AI perspective, for example. Ultimately, this is the way I see it: I am a professional and am perfectly prepared to pay that sort of price if necessary for a form factor like that of the Evolve. For that price, however, I don't want one single trade-off or compromise. To put it another way, for the flagship product I want everything to be as it should be. For the flagship product, it seems to me that there are some extraordinary trade-offs here. I would have been delighted with a pure Keysoft experience and a 'go to Windows' option in the main menu. And, for the avoidance of doubt, pure Keysoft would have included Keyword, which is a really great little wordprocessor. It doesn't do footnotes and what have you, but I'd have been happy to 'go to widnows' and go into Word for that sort of thing. I can't help feeling that Humanware has kind of misunderstood its market here. Jonathan articulates superbly why this device isn't as good for kids as it could be. Meanwhile, I am sure I am not alone as a blind professional in saying that for the price, I am simply not willing to comrpomise.

I hadn't looked at the BTBraille seriously before listening to this review. Principally, this is because of the OS - I'm a Windows user and I use windows for home and for work. I have to say, however, that blazie seem to absolutely have nailed the combined notetaker/computer experience with the desktop mode toggle. Has the BTBraille been reviewed by Jonathan yet? I personally would say his reviews are the best in the business.

Sebbie, I have to say that perhaps we didn't know how much of a good thing we were onto back in the days of Keysoft of the MPower. it was back then that I think Braille translation was optimal and that Keysoft was at its best once you threw in the interactive fiction capability. Sure, it didn't have internal wifi but as I never used my BrailleNote for internet I didn't really care about that. The apex's form facrot was superb. I started out with a qwerty apex and Humanware did a rotten job with the keyboard on that, so I changed over to a Braille keyboard. I do miss those machines. The brailliant Bi20X is about as close as I can get. Keyword on that would be just wonderful. Keypad doesn't do quite as much. The interactive fiction app on that would also be just wonderful. And why not, eh? I can't imagine those additions are all that power hungry.

Anyone have a link to this review?
I agree with Bingo though, a device like this to appeal to professionals needs no or few compromises. I'd be buying it for the form factor because no matter how I slice it, juggling a laptop and Braille display is hard. I've only have used KeySoft anything on the Brailliant and I'm not a fan, so full Windows is what I need. So perhaps if most of the complaints are around KeySoft that'd not bother me so much. But the datedness of the hardware before it is even launched is and has always been a concern. Now I don't think top processor specs are the biggest of issues in Windows now, my 7 year old laptop can still run Windows 11 fine. Nevertheless premium price, they need a way to keep that motherboard up to date at least at shipping time.
Things are evolving fast even for Windows, I'm starting to save up for non of those new NVIDIA based machines that're coming soon so I can run some local LLMs. I guess it won't have a built in Braille display.

I don't have a link but it's the latest episode of the access On podcast. As for carrying as few devices as possible i agree, this is a huge draw of machines such as these. At the moment, the evolve will not serve as a display for your mobile devices as there is no terminal mode. That is coming, we were told, but even then it will only serve as a terminal for IOS/Android - so it won't do for a Braille display for, say, your work laptop if you have one. I think AI is going to matter more and more as, for example, feature-rich image description on-device becomes more in vogue.

As I write, I keep thinking to myself what a shame this is: Humanware get the form factor of these things absolutely right. Their Braille translation is usually second to none. There are so many draws about this product and part of me really still wants it. What a shame the purchase is out of the question, for the reasons I have already given.

, can be found here . And unlike the BT Speak/Braille (which a discussion for that can now be found here among thy Access Technology forum), they honestly should have just thrown the Libreoffice suite on to it. Either that, or brought over a proper version of Keyword.

Jonathan did mention the Google Suite of products, as an alternative.

Why couldn't Human Ware teamed up with Apple, and have the Braille Note Evolve software run on their operating system? Do y'all know how much more trust this community would have if this were the case?

NB. The above idea, sadly wasn't mine.

then this is another overpriced scam of them to the community.
Example? On my stream 2 I could read 1m words + file with absolutely 0 issue on a 512 sd card.
The stream 3 can't literally open those sames, in fact it's literally the same card that I was using for my stream 2. It says file too large to open.
The software is a buggy mess to the point that the famous safari does not respond is genuinely a welcome change, at least there there is a real engineering problem..
After 2 minutes from boot to indexing, when I can open a small text files around 1m characters or even less after 3 minutes the stream 3 freazes, some system error, path/to/file.cpp line number error code, and prompt me to restart the device for the same cycle to repeat.
Is still love my bi 40x only because it's better in some ways than my previous focus 4 40, but even then nothing justifies such a terrible architecture that my old braille connect was ready after boot in 5s but this thing takes 1 minute.
They got bought by esilor but the quality has never been that bad!

First, I think a brailleNote Evolve Mac, so to speak, would engage the trust of some of this community, but not others. I personally would view this as tricky - so many office environments are Windows-based and I'm afraid apple's Office-like apps such as Keynote and Numbers just don't cut the mustard. No no, I think Humanware got the windows choice right, to be honest; but it should have been done the traditional way. The Keynote Companion used to have a 'go to dos' option. Absolutely right. That's how Windows should have been implemented. The gold standard Humanware software model has been very much deleteriously impacted by the identity crisis a lot of these machines seem to face.

But my point here was to ask one simple question which I haven't found the answer too elsewhere, albeit I haven't looked very hard so don't fall on me and give me a good kicking: will the BTBraille act as a terminal for a screen reader?

Oddly enough, Mosen said at least not so far. This does not seem like a difficult thing to implement especially with the full power of Windows. It also took HumanWare about 2 years to get Terminal onto the Monarch. Kind of wonder what is going on with developers over there. SO if you want terminal--and I agree with you--at their current track record check in mid 2028.

Thanks for the reply, travis, and I agree with you. I actually asked if the BTBraille will act as a Braille terminal. I know the evolve won't - not, at least, until there's some further evolution. evolution not revolution because I evolve, I don't....

That's vintage Alan Partridge, that is.

Ah, I missed that distinction. I didn't see it mentioned on the home page. That is a lot of cash for a Raspberry Pi powered device though. I realize a lot of development effort can go into software. but still...

There isn't a Braille terminal on the BT Braille yet but stay tuned! That's probably all I should say about that.

Thank you for the answer re braille Terminal on the BTBraille. to my mind, and at that price, any device without a Braille terminal mode is simply not even going to be considered. As Jonathan so neatly put it during his review: I would find myself having to carry around two Braille displays instead of one.

This is what's needed to build a USB peripheral, and although it's not impossible in Windows, the fact is that support for it is more commonly available in Linux, which is widespread in embedded devices. So, I think it likely that the BT Braille will clear the bar for a complete and correct USB terminal mode on the Raspberry Pi Compute. But we'll see. I look forward to Jonathan's review of the BT Braille, because it will be interesting to hear a (relatively more) non-techie take on it. The other problem for Brits is that Blazie has chosen not to sell through a reseller, but direct; this has implications in case repairs are needed, so I'm still a bit trigger-shy on a purchase.

Yes, Bingo, the MPower was a good release. I do appreciate the SD card slot on the Apex, and I completely agree with you that the travel on the QT was shockingly bad compared to previous generations, but the thing I most remember about the MPower was the polish of the software and the much nicer speaker. Also, the Apex got rid of Remote Synthesizer mode, which is a great shame, since no technical reason exists for that; indeed, a serial protocol is used on the client port for Braille, and Humanware even offered a host-port-connected USB-to-serial adaptor for the use of those, like me, who initially needed them (until I figured out how to get BRLTTY running over the client port on Linux). Ah, happy days … It's a great shame that Humanware don't put some of that legendary attention to detail into their (very closed) Linux-powered Brailliant displays.

macOS's venture into Braille note-taking territory is certainly something to watch, though. It's hardly likely to be as practical as a dedicated notetaker, and we all know here how we feel about Apple's QA these days, but the experience of using it is certainly not without its charms. And, after all, having Apple's weight behind potential future interoperability with Office file formats would be rather hard to ignore, even if not pixel-perfect with MS Word. Using the iPhone would undoubtedly be a more practical experience because of the form factor and the generally superior refinement of VoiceOver, if not for all the problems caused by Bluetooth latency and sleep/wake issues. So maybe that's where the future lies if Apple get it together, but I'd not be madly in love with that. There's just no denying the attraction of a single device, especially when travelling. Truly, it is the killer feature.

To be fair, this is an anticipated problem rather than an actual one: localisation. American English is not the same as british English. US Braille is certainly not the same as UK Braille. Although I use UEB now, I know plenty of people who prefer those older braille codes for reading. I'm fed up of having loads of apps I cannot use - NFB Newsline, NLS Bard and that sort of thing - with no RNIB national talking newspapers and magazines (although I accept this is probably in part down to the RNIB themselves). I remember the days of the PacMate Omni and Vispero making so little effort at UK localisation that you couldn't even type the symbol for our own currency without going through the unicode table. I hope the blaizie crew have made a serious effort at proper localisation.

Sebbie, I believe blazie has a telephone number for the UK. That suggested to me that they were taking their UK operations more seriously than some of these companies. I did not know that the brailliant was Linux-powered. all I want from that product is for Humanware to remember what it is and not to try and get it to do fancy stuff. Keyword, the games module and perhaps a good old stopwatch and chess clock as part of the clock app on there would be fantastic.

Let's see what Jonathan's review of the BTBraille brings. I really am hoping for something positive.

I still prefer the UK2004 grade for output (UEB for input when doing contracted Braille, as that's clearly superior for that purpose).

The good news with the BTSpeak/BTBRaille is it's BRLTTY under the hood, and you've got UEB and NABCC/SEB Grade 2, plus the UK computer code which I normally use. So, yes, entry of the pound sign is absolutely assured. I don't think it will has quite the finesse of KeySoft, with its little touches like paragraph indentation, though I'm sure we could ask Blazie to implement that. However, I really need to speak from experience, so once I've heard Jonathan's review of the BTBraille, I might just wander off and buy one direct from Blazie if I like the sound of it.

And I really don't know why the RNIB isn't integrated into more of these products. It seems Dolphin have succeeded in partnering with them with their EasyReader app, but as far as I know there is no public documentation from RNIB so it could very well be that this is exclusive to Dolphin for now. A shame, because I find EasyReader to be a bit underwhelming as an app, and there's clear utility in bringing RNIB's Braille content direct to Braille displays.

Completely agree. Paragraph indentation was expertly implemented by Humanware on the good old BrailleNoet famly, right up to the apex. Vispero weren't arsed with paragraph indentation at all - I tried explaining it but it didn't really work. The Brailliant line does not implement paragraph indentation automatically at all these days and, in fact, navigation by paragraph in a BRF file is not really possible which is a retrograde step from the Apex. If The BTBraille had something as simple as indicating a new paragraph by a two-cells indent then, well goodness me, that would lay down a marker all right.

I'm glad it is not just i who find the EasyReader thing a bloody nuisance. It's not the worst newspaper-reading experience in the world but it's a long way short of the best. If Dolphin has exclusivity with the RNIB's libraries and the exclusivity deal is signed, there is actually no commercial reason not to disclose that. Quite the reverse, in fact. If something or other is exclusive to Waitrose, for example, you'll know it is. I guess if this really is true all these bleedin' library apps will continue to be bloatware, albeit with a tiny footprint; but imagine the fuss that would be made if all products designed for the North American market had to ship with RNIB Reading Services, UK Bus Checker and....erm....well, think of another example of a very much UK-facing app.

I did listen to the Access On review, and wasn't impressed. One of our local venders did also get in a unit they invited us to try. I only spent about an hour with the device, but here are a few thoughts. Please keep in mind, that I am a low vision user who uses Braille for some tasks, but largely uses speech and magnification.

When working with our vender, we ended up doing the initial setup out of the box, so I got to see what that process is like. The setup process is very similar to a standard Windows setup on a desktop or laptop computer. You need a Microsoft ID, and go through all the Windows updates and setup stuff before eventually getting to the desktop. I have never been good at entering E-mail addresses, passwords, and things like that via a Perkins keyboard, what with the mixed capital, lower case, numbers, and punctuation, so during setup, we just connected a USB QWERTY keyboard to save our sanity.

Once in Windows, it just came up to a Windows desktop, but with the optional Keysoft menu as a program you could switch to. I was able to generally get around Windows with the Perkins keyboard OK, but I have always struggled to use Windows with a Perkins style keyboard, because of having to hold down many keys at a time, like several Braille dots, CTRL, ALT, etc. I really wish they would have included a TAB key on the device, but using the dots 1,2 and 4,5 chords did work. I had some trouble getting ALT Tab to consistently work, and found that the dot 1.2 chord worked better, but not the dot 4,5 when ALT Tabbing for some reason.

I used a Braille n Speak way back in the day, and have dabbled with versions of the BrailleNote over the years, but wouldn't call myself a power user of these devices by any means. Once I switched to a laptop from the Braille n Speak, I never looked back. I like sometimes using Braille displays to read text, code, etc., but have never liked using Windows on a Perkins keyboard. So I will usually use the computer's keyboard for navigation, and the Braille display/note taker for reading and occasional navigation.

Like others have said, the Evolve seems like a half baked version of a full computer, and a note taker. It doesn't have the full traditional Keysoft, but it also feels kind of odd as a Windows device. There is currently also no terminal mode, so you can't use it as a display with your IOS or other device. I know this will change, but...

Honestly, I think the better option would be to capitalize on the Brailliant and Mantis devices they already have. Both are great devices, and I like both quite a bit. They could just release the NVDA add-ons and their Windows version of Keysoft software as a purchasable software package, and people could use a laptop/tablet and Braille display combo, but still get the benefits of things like Key math that students may need.

Yes, it's nice to have one device to carry around, but I'd personally much rather have a computer and Braille display combo. I can then choose when I want to bring each device, or use them both. The Brailliant and Mantis already have basic note taking, so they are still nice for taking notes in classes or meetings, but they work well with computers and phones. I also like that, if one piece is broken, I still have access to the other piece. On top of all that, for the price of a BrailleNote, I can buy a laptop, Braille display, phone, and maybe even a tablet.

I just feel that the Evolve is a much clunkier way to use a really expensive, PC in a proprietary shell. Those are just my thoughts though. I'm sure there is a market for this device, but I'm just not sold on it myself. And I don't know if Humanware will ever release a Windows version of Keysoft for sale, but I wish they would for people who need it. But then they couldn't sell a computer for six grand...

but thank you guys for your reviews.
Humanware have lost the software game apparently :(
As a side note, I am probably one of the rare end consumer to have the PIAF humanware sell made by Harpo I believe. It's expensive for the old tech inside, but at least there is literally 0 software in it, pure electrical circuit, and it does one thing only and does it very very well.
The appliance as a service model is being applied in AT too and it's a very very bad sign, at least orbit research are honest and are actually innovating.

Thanks for the review. I agree Perkins-style keyboarding does not lend itself that well to Windows. JAWS has tried to make a bunch of commands for the Focus, and while it works it is still just not easy. The QBraille also tried this adding more keys. That helped but Ctrl+n is just hard to do no matter what. And no tab key is jsut amazing. I think I'd only consider the QWERTY version.
I just got an email from Humanware promoting a trade-in proram if you have a BrailleNote Touch or BrailleSense 6? (That's not even their product right?) What jumped out at me, either I missed it or it didn't register, is the larger version has 32 cells? That is just too small, $6,495 USD and 32 cells? I find Windows painful to use with anything less than 40 cells. The Mantis has no problem fitting 40 cells and I'd not want a smaller QWERTY keyboard either. Now I feel even more disappointed.