Blind Main
The main community at rblind.com, for discussion of all things blindness.
You can find the rules for this community, and all other communities we run, here: https://ourblind.com/comunity-guidelines/ Lemmy specifics: By participating on the rblind.com Lemmy server, you are able to participate on other communities not run, controlled, or hosted by us. When doing so, you are expected to abide by all of the rules of those communities, in edition to also following the rules linked above. Should the rules of another community conflict with our rules, so long as you are participating from the rblind.com website, our rules take priority. Should we receive complaints from other instances or communities that you are repeatedly, knowingly, and maliciously breaking there rules, we may take moderator action against you, even if your posts comply with all of the rblind.com rules linked above.
view the rest of the comments
Personally, I'm saving up for the Optima as my next big tech purchase. My understanding is that it will support terminal mode, so you can just use it as a Braille display for IOS if you don't want to fully boot into Windows. I currently have the Orbit Writer, and it works well, though it doesn't support QWERTY input. I did find this discussion on Applevis from someone who's using the Mantis QWERTY input on IOS, for what it's worth.
Appreciate the input. Do we have any idea the price range of the Optima yet?
The company has done multiple interviews with the Double Tap podcast, and they've been pretty cagy about that. Makes me going to believe it'll be hire than I would like. It's based on the framework laptop, and if you look at the cost of the Frameworks themselves (even as a non-AT product without a Braille display), they're quite on the high end. My guess would be take the price of the framework laptop you'd want, and add the price of the Orbit Reader 20 to that, and you'd be in about the range. So probably something like 2 grand US for the starter model, with more if you want upgrades in memory/CPU/hard disc.
Honestly, I'd be super impressed with a $2000 price point, especially when you consider the only all-in-one "alternative" is $4000 or more notetakers that have less processing power and capabilities than my phone.
I suspect that'll be the starter model, though. The stats on the cheapest framework just aren't that impressive. If you want more CPU cores, enough disc space to actually get things done, or a useful amount of RAM (I think the starter framework is only 8 gig but can't recall), the price goes up quickly. Yes, it makes me sad that 8 gigs isn't enough memory to browse the web or run the dozens and dozens of bloated apps I need to run daily.