I don't even need a dedicated notetaker, just a braille display. Most of the features it contains, I don't even use. But, I found out that there's no auto-advance mode using iOS, so my iPad and braille display combination idea won't work for me. I really need that auto-advance mode, because I do a lot of reading, and don't want to have to push a button every time I need to advance the display. I read fast, and would need to push that button every half second or so. Not going to happen.
I just wish there was a company that actually cared. You're dealing with a community that, unfortunately, tends to be a low-income community. I understand there's a cost for the technology, but all of these repair costs are ridiculous.
I would support anyone who can come up with a cheaper, alternative braille display.

Oh, it does have an auto-advance. Almost all of the braille displays do. The problem is that iOS has no support for an auto-advance mode. All of these features on a braille display are dependent on the software being used, so depending on your screen reader, you may not get to use them all. I've researched, and asked several sources, and iOS doesn't support auto-advance. Shame.

Humanware has increasingly seemed to lack humanity. The important thing to do, of course, is not require support--an inevitably impossible task. My opinion is that you were possibly being lied to in addition to being fleeced, but of course there is no verification. It just seems like a very unkind thing to do, indeed, when you pay so much and there is already a significant margin.

If you're like me, you're hostage. You need a braille display and Humanware has always been good about solidifying their interface and braille support. I am only sorry it can't be my primary device. However, while I love iOS, I'd never depend on it for consistent braille output as I can from the BrailleNote.

Oh, well. Perhaps later. Perhaps when mainstream products care about braille form.

Yeah, these companies really need to get with the times. With IOS and OSX introducing out of the box accessibility, and with Android not too far behind, gone are the days when blind people had to rely exclusively on yesterday's technology sold at an exorbitant price in order to function. I understand they're small companies, but really, paying thousands of dollars for an assisting device such as a Braille display while the computing device you use is only a few hundred bucks doesn't make sense to me any more, if it ever did.
I also had a pretty outraged reaction to Dancing Dots the other day, the company that makes Goodfeel and related music software for the blind. While I was lucky enough to have the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind buy me the Goodfeel package, in itself over fifteen hundred dollars, I now found out that in order for it to work with 64-bit versions of Windows 7, I have to cough up four hundred bucks for an upgrade that, aside from adding that much needed compatibility, doesn't seem to offer much of anything else in terms of upgrading. I'm sorry, but that's over a third the cost of my entire computer system right there. More importantly, it's almost as expensive as the whole price of Cibelius 7, which is probably the most popular notation software for the sighted out there.
This sort of massive overpricing is also evident in screenreaders. Take Jaws. Nearly a thousand bucks for a version of the program itself, with a limit on how often you can install it, and one of the worst license management systems out there, (though admittedly Goodfeel is worse). Then of course, if a so-called upgrade comes along, we have to pay up three hundred bucks, for perhaps one inconvenience fixed and a thousand and one bells and whistles added in that, I believe, the average person doesn't even care about. Does anyone here consistently use Research It, for instance? I personally never saw what the big deal was all about, since if I needed to do research, I did it on my own, online, like everyone else. Yet the way FS has been raving about Research it, you'd think it's the biggest innovation added to screenreaders since, oh I dunno, the speech synthesizer?
I simply don't know what to say any more. I understand that many of these companies are small and perhaps don't have nearly as many resources as corporate giants like Apple and Microsoft. However, at this point I feel that perhaps these companies have gotten a little too comfortable. They've seen blindness-related agencies, or schools, offer up millions of dollars to buy up their products for their clients. They know we're desperate enough. And now, even though they could probably afford to be more reasonable with their pricing, they're using our need for their assistive tech to leach as much money out of those agencies as possible. And because they're relatively certain about getting that money, they don't even bother trying to be particularly innovative any more. Truly, what have we come to...

Hi,
I sympathize with you, LML. I had a simlar incident with my apex, though fortunately nothing came of it.
I got my Apex about a year ago, right before my Freshman year of college, which was quite a nasty experience the first semester, partly because of a professor who didn't understand the tremendous shock, and partly because of the tromendous shock this one professor didn't understand... Anyway, I'd just gotten a set of documents for my Western civ class, so I stuck them on a thumb drive, popped it into the Apex, and boom. Everything, and I mean everything, goes out. Tried a reset. NO go. Tried all the resets. Well, it would say loading keysoft, and would get stuck at 10 percent. Battery was at 60 percent so I knew that wasn't a problem. So I call Humanware, and got some Indian guy who I could barely understand, telling me that he didn't know what was going on and I had to send it in for repairs. I don't know how much it costs because the state covered it.
Anyway, I was getting used to using my laptop for note taking needs, and also using it for leisure needs as well... six weeks go by, and no news on the Apex. Since I wasn't desperately needing it, I wasn't in a hurry for it. People kept asking me, when's it coming back? Why don't you call and ask them about it? I always told them, they'll send it back when they're done with it. Little did I know, they probably would've kept it. When I finally called, I got a nice lady who asked me for some information, then got the shock of her life. Apparently it had been sitting for quite a while, doing nothing. I ended up getting it back in less than two weeks after that.
So, it was all fine and well, until I turned it on. I was in my jazz history class, getting ready to take notes, which I knew would be important for the final. The professor said, "you'll need this information down the road closer to the end of the semester." So, I race through the menus, opening a document. But, big surprise. flash disk is missing from the drive list! Now, The only thing I could do is leave the drive set to nothing. then, this O U contraction sign would come up, and I could continue. However, that wasn't just a little hiccup.
I typed the notes I needed to, then saved the file. A day or two later, it crashed, requiring me to do a reset. This time, it did come back, but big surprise II: my file was gone. at the time, I wasn't worried. I thought, surely I'd get another opportunity to write those notes down before they were brought to the front lines. I also thought if I fought with the Apex hard enough, I could resolve the issue. I was wrong on both counts. In less than a month I was back to using the laptop. People kept telling me to send it back, send it back. It's a $6000 device, it should work. While I do agree with that reasoning, I didn't want to spend the time sending it back. I couldn't trust that it was going to come back working to perfection. So it sat under my bed, for months, and months, and months.
Finally at the beginning of July of the next year, after the Apex was sitting there useless for 9 months, my tech teacher calls me. That was no surprise. His primary job is helping kids with technology, up through high school. But on the side, he also helps older adults, who are low vision, or who are in the process of losing their vision, get acquainted with technology they might benefit from. well, one of his clients was a person who needed help with the Apex, and so he called me. He wanted to take me to the guy's house with him so we both could help him out. I warned him that my Apex was screwed up, but he still told me to bring it and see what happened, then told me to get on it and call Humanware while it was summer and I wouldn't be using the Apex every day. I actually was going to call them, just to tell them what they did to it. I wasn't going to be all unprofessional either, but the whole thing was getting old. But I had to help this client first. So, since the Apex was long dead, I plugged it in, and left it charge overnight. When I come back the next morning, battery's at 100 percent. And big surprise III: now we have a flash Disk. Apparently the thing had been so dead that everything was reset.
Now, what I really don't understand, my M Power never had any of these problems, for the 5 years I used it. I used it hard, too. The only time I had to send it in was when I accidentally dropped it, and ruined the enter key. they had to replace the spring under the key, and it was almost good as new. The only problem was that it felt too stiff, but that was because the other keys had gotten a bit flimsy from heavy use, so I was used to that flimsiness.
I really do understand that some of these things are hard, and expensive to make. I've never heard of a cheap braille display that's actually being sold yet. I know several are in the works, but until one comes out, we'll be at the mercy of the big boys, at least in that department. But, I'd think if they're gonna charge $6000, they'd better pay us back in the form of decent customer service, and decent equipment! The Goodfeel example is why I will never buy a high end scoring software with a high end accessibility package with my own free will. If I end up buying it, it won't be my decision, and it certainly won't be my preferred software. I've found free software which meets my needs in the music side of things. It might not see me through to the music industry, because it's not like Sebelius, Finale, or any of those, but it does the thing I want it to do, which is make great music. I wouldn't want to score my music with the huge packages because that still requires a lot of sight to make sure the score turns out. Just because it sounds right doesn't mean it looks right, and I am the last person to go to for scoring questions/assignments. Why should I pay big bucks for accessibility when I'm probably going to ask someone sighted to help me a lot with it anyway? Okay the accessibility might help me do some things, but I'm not paying that price for it.

the problem is that these blindness companies Humanware, freedom scientific, and others have stuck to the same mantra there whole existence.  "we are developing hardware and software for a limited market and we have to up the prices."  you see this in jaws, braille displays, embossers, braille writers, and even the Sendero seeing eye GPS app for IOS.  while that statement was maybe true back in the nineties, it is definitely not true now.  its a whole different culture of people using the internet and technology.  back in the ninties you only might have used a screnereader if you needed it for a job.  hence job access with speech.  well, that is if you were employed at all as a blind person.  let alone working around the precious computers that the boss wouldn't want the blind person to touch for fear they might brake them.  now a days blind teenagers are using computers.  hence there gonna want cool tech gadgets.  they only way to get them now a days unless your rich, is to go threw a government organization like vocational rehabilitation services or something similar.  i wont even get started on that front.  they also say there researching ways to make lower cost braille displays, but i'll believe it when i see it. i'd love to have a braille display, but the only way for me to get one is threw RSB and i'd doubt they give me one.
while I'm not saying that its not expensive to make braille displays and such, i personally believe that if they could charge less not only would it open the market up more for us to buy it, but it would also open up the market for people in other countries to buy braildisplays. it would be at a lower price, but they still make the same money if not more because they are selling more product. apple could take some of this advice too.   basic business management 101 here.
as far as customer service  goes, i have heard that freedom scientific is one of the worst.  mostly because they get there money and contracts from government orgs.  they are not prepared for the end user to give them a call.  while i've not ever really had to call someone like freedom scientific or humanware, i've not heard good things about there customer service

Hi.

I agree completely with what is said.

That is why I use as much mainstream technology as I possibly can. Apple, windows Computers, etc.
I also follow the same policy with software like screen readers. We shouldn't have to pay more to access what the resto f the world gets for a lesser cost. But that is going off topic.
This is all just so frustrating.

Thanks for the laugh, I needed that.

I've done some reading on some of the websites that discuss trying to make cheaper braille displays. Honestly, the problem is that a lot of these are just a small team of people, with no real financial backing. When you're trying to make a new product, you need the finances to make multiple prototypes, knowing many of them will fail. It seems that many of them have some prototypes, but then run out of money to keep the projects going. It'd be nice to see someone with some financial backing take an interest in this, but I won't hold my breath.

Kickstarter campaigns seem to do well, depending on how much a person gets the word out there.

The products cost enough without them making you replace something that's been working fine.