Greetings!

Yep couldnt' agree with you more.

I was testing one of these machines for some time and it amazed me just how
unstable and unreliable the machine was.

Secondly, the machine was based around an XT computer so therefore you
could only run DOS programs with it and even then you were limited.  For
example if the DOS program didn't write to the BIOS and you wanted to find
out what was happening all you could do was go into the 'VERTUAL SCREEN" (a
sort of review mode) and read the screen from that, no light bar tracking,
no monitoring for changes of any kind etc.

The other part of the Aria that really annoyed me was the terrible speech,
I'd like to know why Robotron didn't use the Eureka speech, far clearer.

Robotron, released a "BLACK BOX" that would allow a user of an Aria to
connect a standard typewriter-style keyboard to the machine but this "BLACK
BOX" had one very serious downside, it took up the serial port so forget
trying to connect to the internet with a modem for example and using a
standard computer keyboard.  Oh and seeing as I mentioned modems, forget
using modems above the speed of 14.4, the Aria doesn't support them
although it claims to.

Next the accessories for the Aria I thought to be extremely expensive, for
example $500.00 for an external floppy drive and the memory cards were not
exactly cheap.

I believe that a machine worth the amount of money it is should be far
better than it is.

At 11:34 29/10/98 , Georgina Joyce wrote:
>Hi All
>
>Sorry for delay in responding to this msg but I feel that it has to be said
>that the Aria has a lot of problems.
>
>I purchase one two years ago to support my studies.  I had a lot of problems
>with it.  I've lost countless number of files that contained important
>lecture notes and found the battery to be very unreliable.  Robotron had a
>E-mail list but then decided to discontinue it.
>
>I would advise anyone to think twice about purchasing one of these
>unreliable machines.
>
>Gena J
>
>
>
>Gena J
>Mobile
>07801659097
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: VICUG-L: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Kelly Pierce
>Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 1998 6:54 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: tech: an alternative to the braille & speak
>
>
>from the november 1997 issue of the braille forum.
>
>               ROBOTRON'S ARIA: IT DOES EVERYTHING BUT SING!
>
>                               by Nolan Crabb
>
>   So you're thinking about one of those portable notetakers with a
>   braille keyboard. You're thinking about buying one, but you can't get
>   excited about it. You've seen the Braille 'N Speak, after all, and
>   while it does a fine job at what it does, something somewhere's
>   nagging at you  forcing you to wonder if there isn't an alternative.
>   Indeed, there is. It's available at a good price, especially when you
>   consider the capabilities. It's called the Aria, a product of
>   Robotron, an Australian manufacturer of adaptive equipment for blind
>   users. The Aria has so much to offer that you can't afford to ignore
>   it as an option.
>
>   It appears that Robotron is committed to making serious inroads into
>   the U.S. market with its Aria. If you've ever seen or used a Braille
>   'N Speak, you have some idea as to the dimensions of the Aria. Like
>   the Braille 'N Speak, it's designed to serve as a notetaker,
>   clock/calendar, and calculator. But in fairness to both products,
>   that's where the comparisons have to end. You see, the Aria is not
>   merely a dedicated word processor with extra features. It's an actual
>   computer with a DOS- compatible operating system. With the Aria, you
>   can import and export files in WordPerfect, copy files from one
>   directory to another as you would in DOS using a regular computer, and
>   more. These are very different machines. If you're a traveler who
>   takes lots of notes on the go, the Aria might be what you're looking
>   for.
>
>   The Aria can use memory cards which allow you to have the fast
>   equivalent of a hard disk inside the machine. The unit we borrowed
>   from Technologies for the Visually Impaired, Inc., the primary
>   Robotron dealer in the U.S., did not include a memory card. Still, it
>   worked fine without one. With one inserted, however, you have pretty
>   solid computing power at your disposal.
>
>   While the machine has a braillewriter-style keyboard, it also offers
>   function keys and cursor keys like a full-sized computer. The function
>   keys carry out various tasks depending upon which Aria feature you're
>   working in at the time. Setting It Up:
>
>   Running the setup routines for the Aria is easily accomplished. In the
>   setup, you can determine whether you want grade 1, grade 2 or computer
>   braille. You can set the speech volume, pitch, rate, inflection, and
>   more simply by moving the cursor keys through the various talking
>   menus. Once set up, the machine remains as you set it. (I lost full
>   battery power once and lost all my settings, but they can be saved to
>   a memory card for easy retrieval if necessary. I experienced that loss
>   only once during the eight weeks or so I used the machine.) The Word
>   Processor:
>
>   When you turn on the Aria, it sounds a beep, then seconds later a harp
>   chord plays. While you may not have a divine or angelic computing
>   session every time, that harp sound reminds you that this machine
>   includes an impressive sound chip capable of producing voice,
>   primitive beeps, great sound effects, touchtone telephone keypad
>   sounds, and musical sounds. The Aria is capable of playing WAV files
>   files that produce music or sound usually associated with DOS or
>   Windows-based computers. After the harp plays, you can tap function
>   key 1 to enter the built-in word processor. Once you're there, you can
>   simply begin typing or set up your pages and margins. There's a
>   special effects menu for bolding and underlining text, page numbering,
>   page breaks, tabs, and more. A two-keystroke combination lets you save
>   your files, import them, and export them. You can import files from
>   other sources and export them as WordPerfect, Wordstar or other file
>   formats. You can do the kind of things you might expect to do with a
>   word processor  block text, move text, spell check your document,
>   count the words, etc. Of course, you can print to either an
>   Epson-compatible or LaserJet-compatible printer. The Aria has some
>   substantially flexible braille translation capabilities that would let
>   you connect a braille printer to the computer and produce respectable
>   braille. The Clock:
>
>   The Aria includes built-in clock, stopwatch, and timer functions. In
>   addition, you can set reminder alarms and a wake- up alarm that would
>   bring the heaviest sleeper to his trembling feet. It begins with a
>   loud rooster crow then blows an incredibly loud, obnoxious and
>   persistent train whistle until you stop it. There's no snooze feature,
>   but after being hit with that train whistle, you'll be grabbing the
>   Aria and your clothes simultaneously.
>
>   This is a wonderful machine for those ham operators or shortwave
>   listeners who want to keep track of their local time and Coordinated
>   Universal Time (UTC) concurrently. You can set your local time and
>   then have the clock keep track of another time zone. You can swap the
>   two around or simply have one spoken then the other. It's great for
>   those contact logs you want to keep. The Calculator:
>
>   The calculator is very full featured as nearly as I could tell. It
>   appears that the scientific functions are robust, and you can
>   entertain yourself for hours converting miles to kilometers, liters to
>   gallons, Fahrenheit temperatures to centigrade ones and much more. If
>   you're just balancing the checkbook or doing relatively simple
>   day-to-day kinds of calculations, you won't even stretch this
>   calculator function. Telecommunications:
>
>   The telecommunications capability of this machine is one of the best
>   things it has to offer. You don't need special added software.
>   Everything's built in, including the protocols or languages needed for
>   computers to smoothly send and receive files.
>
>   The Aria allows for easy setup of the terminal and serial port, and
>   the communications with an Internet server or other on- line service
>   are smooth and seamless. Of course, you'll still need a modem. For the
>   person on the go interested in quickly sending and receiving files,
>   the Aria truly shines. For what it's worth, this machine can also
>   function as a DecTalk- compatible speech synthesizer. Please realize
>   that while it is DecTalk compatible, it sounds nothing like a DecTalk.
>   The Telephone Directory:
>
>   A braille notetaker wouldn't be worth much if it didn't offer the
>   ability to create some kind of address book that includes phone
>   numbers. In this area, the Aria does nicely. You can create telephone
>   directories of almost unlimited size. I didn't like the address
>   feature particularly. I would have liked a feature that would allow
>   multiple addresses for individuals. But the actual phone number
>   portion more than made up for the address inconvenience. In fact, I
>   was downright dazzled by it. The Aria can not only store your phone
>   directory, it can actually dial the number for you. Simply hold your
>   telephone mouthpiece up to the Aria's speaker, tap a key, and the
>   sound chip comes alive and sounds the telephone keypad tones.
>
>   This is a must-have feature especially if you're a ham operator who
>   wants to connect to the public telephone system with your radio. While
>   most handheld ham radios have telephone keypads on them, there may be
>   times when you want to dial without someone seeing the special codes
>   you may have to enter to connect your radio to the telephone system.
>   By holding your radio near the Aria, you could have the computer do
>   the dialing for you while you hold down the push-to-talk key.
>
>   You don't have to be something as esoteric as a ham operator to enjoy
>   this feature. Those long-distance codes that can tax your memory can
>   be stored safely in the Aria and effortlessly dialed from your hotel
>   room or even a phone booth.
>
>   You can sort the phone directory and search it for names. You can even
>   load a separate directory should you want to do so. The Diary:
>
>   The diary lets you set up appointments that can be sorted, searched,
>   and edited. The calendar here is OK, but it could be easier to use.
>   You can determine on what day of the week a certain date will occur,
>   and you can figure out quickly the number of days from one date to
>   another. The File Manager:
>
>   The Aria's file manager lets you rename, delete, copy, search for a
>   specific file, tag or mark files for further manipulation, change the
>   file attributes, remove a directory from the built-in RAM disk or the
>   memory card, format a drive, and speak the status of your disk. It's
>   pretty comprehensive and relies heavily on the function keys, as do
>   most of the other Aria features. Battery Life:
>
>   While battery life may depend somewhat on the intensive nature of the
>   task you've asked the Aria to perform, I got somewhere between six and
>   ten hours on a charge. Robotron says the battery can be fully charged
>   in three hours. You can determine how much battery life is left by a
>   three-key combination. The battery's life is measured in percent. When
>   charging, the Aria simply says "charging." I found the battery
>   percentage gauge somewhat unreliable. At one point, I was assured by
>   the machine that I had 100 percent of battery life. A bit later, that
>   percentage had slipped to 75. That's natural enough. But when the
>   gauge mysteriously rebounded to 100 percent a few minutes later, I had
>   to question the integrity of the gauge or the battery. Of course, with
>   NiCad batteries, anything is possible, so placing blame entirely on
>   the equipment may not be fair. The Manual:
>
>   The folks at Robotron certainly know how to write a user's manual.
>   This one is extremely clear, concisely written, and very logically
>   presented. If I were buying a notetaker for the first time, I'd
>   consider the Aria because of the clarity of the manual. Regardless of
>   your experience or lack thereof with notetakers, you can teach
>   yourself how to use this machine quite easily with the manual.
>
>   Having said all that, I admit I yearned for a reference section where
>   the commands were all laid out with brief explanations. Some kind of
>   reference card would be valuable to first-time users. The cassette
>   version of the manual is thoroughly tone indexed, and the Australian
>   accent of the narrator makes listening to it a novel experience. If
>   you have to judge a product by its manual to some degree, the Aria
>   gets high marks on that alone. So Is It Perfect?
>
>   The Aria's far from perfect. In fact, there are some starkly negative
>   things about the unit that should force any buyer to take a hard look
>   at the machine before the wallet comes out.
>
>   First, I never got used to the keyboard. In fairness to Robotron, I
>   should admit that while I learned to use a braillewriter at age four,
>   I've always been somewhat faster on a good old qwerty keyboard. So
>   there's my bias up front. Still, I use a Braille 'N Speak rather
>   heavily, and I've achieved a respectable speed with it. Not so with
>   the Aria keyboard. It feels spongy rather than springy. I had to use a
>   moderate amount of pressure just to get the right keystrokes. More
>   than once, I've attempted to check the battery life only to find
>   myself in the initial setup section called mode. I think the keys are
>   just too far apart and the action too unresponsive to ever make this
>   machine a keyboard aficionado's dream. Add to that the fact that you
>   can choose between two keyboard settings only  click keys and spoken
>   keys. Those rapid typists among us would prefer a silent keys setting
>   where it neither clicked nor spoke when a key was depressed. The
>   absence of this silent key setting is a real problem for anyone who
>   doesn't want to hear constant clicking or letters spoken through the
>   earphone or speaker.
>
>   Keyboard performance is a very subjective thing, however. I strongly
>   recommend you play with one of these units a bit before buying if
>   possible. You may find the keyboard OK, but I never got used to it.
>
>   There were times when the design of this unit bugged me. To simply
>   turn it off, for example, you have to press all four cursor keys at
>   once. If you ever played Twister as a kid, this Aria turning-off
>   exercise will bring back fond memories. It feels like a miniature game
>   of hand twister every time you turn it off. Come on, guys. If you're
>   serious about the U.S. market, give us a simple on/off switch. I'll
>   bet there isn't a prospective American buyer who wouldn't pay another
>   50 cents or so to get a convenient on/off switch. Heck, we might even
>   pay a buck or two for it. This machine with its multiple simultaneous
>   keystrokes isn't designed with touch typists in mind. You have to take
>   your hands off the six writing keys in order to hit a function key or
>   a shifted function key. In some instances, the shift key and the
>   function key will be at nearly opposite ends of the computer,
>   necessitating a two-handed approach. In its defense, the Aria is small
>   and there had to be some keyboard compromises made to keep it that
>   way. If small's the name of your game, chances are you will tolerate
>   most, but probably not all, of the keyboard compromises.
>
>   I initially hated the speech in the Aria. As one who loves to crank
>   the rate of a synthesizer to something akin to astronomical heights, I
>   figured I could stand any voice. The Braille 'N Speak's speech chip
>   comes up with some pretty primitive sounding speech much of the time.
>   Initially, I thought the Aria was worse. As I worked with it and
>   learned to manipulate it more to my liking, I'd say the Aria might be
>   slightly better at some things. I had a difficult time making the
>   speech pronunciation dictionary work correctly. The Bottom Line:
>
>   The multiple capabilities of the Aria make it a good deal for the
>   price. Interactive games are now available, the word processor is
>   probably adequate for most needs, and the telecommunications and
>   telephone directory enhance the value of the machine a great deal. The
>   calendar and diary are probably the most lackluster features, and the
>   reminder alarms you can set for appointments or whatever may not be
>   loud enough to get your attention if you're doing something away from
>   the Aria. If you like braillewriter keyboards, you'll probably want to
>   consider buying this machine.
>
>   At press time, the Aria costs $1,245. The price includes a two
>   megabyte flash RAM card. Other packaging options are available,
>   including external storage devices. You can upgrade the unit simply by
>   downloading new software; no need to send it back for chip
>   replacements. For additional information, contact TFVI, 9 Nolan Ct.,
>   Hauppauge, NY 11788. Tel. (516) 724-4479. E- mail: [log in to unmask]
>     _________________________________________________________________
>
>
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Dane Trethowan
P.O. Box 244
MALVERN VI  Australia   3144
Cell Phone (61 413) 934 132
EMAIL [log in to unmask]
Home Page
<http://www.quantum.net.au/grtdane/>http://www.quantum.net.au/grtdane/

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