[gui-talk] laptop recommendations, please

Tue Dec 23 14:29:06 UTC 2008

Hi,
for me it's the keyboard and speakers.
I have heard some pretty rough sounding laptops in my time.
Considering we need to use the speakers for speech, if it's horrible
it won't work for me.
Chris
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:12:34 -0500, "Raul A. Gallegos"
<raul at asmodean.net> wrote:

>When it comes to laptops, I think keyboards are one of the most 
>important things to consider. Take the MSI Wind compared against the 
>Acer Aspire One for example.
>
>Feature for feature, I like the MSI Wind better than the Aspire One. 
>However the keyboard on the MSI Wind kills it for me. I personally feel 
>the MSI Wind handles battery life better, and the onboard bluetooth is a 
>definite plus because I will be using Bluetooth. However if Bluetooth is 
>not a concern, then it does not matter when you use either of these two. 
>The keyboard on the Aspire One, although smaller, has the keys placed 
>just right for my fingers. Most notably the period, comma, and slash 
>keys. On the MSI, the keys are slightly more narrow, causing me to press 
>the slash key more often when I'm trying to hit the period. Also, since 
>I don't like changing Window-Eyes hot keys, with the MSI Wind, I would 
>have to be forced to use the laptop layout, or get an external number 
>pad to get the functionality of Window-Eyes. The reason is because MSI 
>Wind's keyboard method of handling the embedded numberpad is 
>non-standard and is a serious flaw in the design imho.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>albert griffith wrote the following on 12/22/2008 5:52 PM:
>> I'd like to get a sense of how people are able to use the keyboards built in
>> to laptops.  Are they generally user friendly or do most of you use a
>> standard keyboard plugged in to a USB port?
>> If it's reasonable I'd prefer to use the keyboard that comes with the
>> machine but I've only had experience with my wife's and it's not too
>> friendly.
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of Darrell Shandrow
>> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 12:44 PM
>> To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] laptop recommendations, please
>> 
>> Hello Raul,
>> 
>> How is the way the MSI Wind handles the numeric keypad any different from 
>> other laptops and netbooks? Don't they all pretty much rely on the use of a 
>> special FN key in conjunction with the right side of the QWERTY keyboard?
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Raul A. Gallegos" <raul at asmodean.net>
>> To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 10:23 AM
>> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] laptop recommendations, please
>> 
>> 
>> I've seen several. Most have at least 1 sd card slot and at least 2 or 3
>> usb ports for external devices. the Acer Aspire One has 2 sd card slots
>> and 3 usb ports. The MSI Wind has 1 sd card slot and 3 usb ports. The
>> MSI Wind has better power management I think, but it's keyboard has some
>> serious issues. I'm not talking about its design meaning that it feels
>> right because the keys are big, but the problem with this one is the
>> design of how they did the number pad which is embedded in the right
>> side of the keyboard. Also, some models of the MSI Wind have bluetooth
>> as well as wifi. All of them as far as I know have wifi so that's a
>> non-issue for Internet access. They also all have an Ethernet port for a
>> wired connection. With a 3-cell battery I can get around 1.5 to 2 hours
>> of use, and with a 6-cell battery I can get over 3.5 hours of use with
>> Window-Eyes, internet explorer, and/or Firefox.
>> 
>> Of course if you run other things, your millage will vary.
>> 
>> denise avant wrote the following on 12/22/2008 10:10 AM:
>>> hi,
>>> io'm just curious for someone who might know, what is the battery life 
>>> when running a screen reader on these computers? are they bluetooth 
>>> enabled or do they have usb ports for connecting braille displays cd or 
>>> dvd drives? thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>> --- On Mon, 12/22/08, Raul A. Gallegos <raul at asmodean.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> From: Raul A. Gallegos <raul at asmodean.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] laptop recommendations, please
>>> To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>> Date: Monday, December 22, 2008, 7:43 AM
>>>
>>> The Acer Aspire One is a good buy for around $349.00 in most places.
>>> It's very small, just about 2 pounds in weight and runs with Window-Eyes
>>> just fine.
>>>
>>> Good luck.
>>>
>>> seville allen wrote the following on 12/21/2008 8:18 PM:
>>>> I am shopping for a laptop.  I'd like it to be fairly lightweight
>>>> (recognizing that very light may be more money than I have to pay); I
>>> don't
>>>> care about a high resolution screen, just enough for a seeing technician
>>> if
>>>> one is needed some time.  I use jfw and currently XP home edition with
>>>> outlook and office 2002 home edition.
>>>>
>>>> I do see that most new computers now run vista which I will learn if I
>>> have
>>>> to do so.  And some salespeople told me that some business .com sites
>>> still
>>>> sell xp computers and, according to the salespeople, xp will most likely
>>> be
>>>> used for a long time by many.  And, what antivirus protection would you
>>>> recommend given jfw doesn't like some of the antivirus programs.
>>>> Brand and power, etc recommendations would be helpful.  I'm a pretty
>>> good
>>>> user and can navigate my way around installing software and doing some
>>>> troubleshooting, but the techie talk about ram, drives, processors, etc
>>> make
>>>> my brain wiggle!  Help from those of you who know these things is 
>>>> welcome.
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>> t
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>>>
>> 
>> 

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