shacklebolt

I'll be checking out the exhibit hall on Friday, and then heading to Disneyland.

How about you guys? For anyone attending, what're you looking forward to seeing this year? I believe Orbit Research is going to be demoing the Optima laptop, which I'm pretty excited to get a look at.

In a brief departure from sanity, I recently thought to myself, "surely ZoomText must be better than it once was, I'll try it again!"

I downloaded on my laptop, looks relatively good. I download it on my desktop, I download it on my desktop, everything just looks blurry/squiggly.

So I called tech support, to see if they can help me sort this out before I buy the app.

Highlights from the call have included, but are not limited to:

"The clarity of the text depends on the website, what font they use. As it gets bigger it's going to get blurry."

When I explain that zoomtext hooks into, like, the actual text in the apps it can (which I don't actually know the technical term for, lol) tech support guy informs me that he doesn't think that's how the app works. (That it's all just, like, interpolation like zooming into a digital photo.) EDIT: I subsequently found out that they have been having issues with the "xFont" feature for years now.

Dude wants to make a registry edit. Bold move, tier 1 tech support bro, but it just looks like a font change, probably not going to brick anything.

Taskbar no longer functions correctly after reboot, even with Zoomtext off. He scrolls aimlessly in the registry before going into Zoomtext and trying to make changes that have absolutely no relation.

I pointed this out. He told me he knows. He proceeds to try to make changes in zoomtext repeatedly anyways.

He then informs me that he's waiting for his colleague for help.

When I ask if this can be escalated above tier 1, as I rather would like them to unbrick it, he tells me "he's the one who gave us the change." Okay, that does not inspire confidence...

At one point, he told me to "calm down."

When I asked him to just email me over the changes he made, he tells me "you're looking at it." I was not, in fact, looking at it.

We are now on hold for his "colleague," or at least for him to furiously google registry changes how to revert or something.

In addition to the above bricking, the text in zoomtext is just as blurry as it was. 😂

Update: after he failed to solve the problem, he tells me that although it's "hard to believe," the registry edit had nothing to do with an immediate problem upon reboot, and they're totally unrelated and there's nothing he can do. But don't worry, he's going to forward my contact info to management!

Update 2: I fixed the problem a couple of minutes off the call by, shockingly, reverting the change he made to the registry.

Update 3: to their credit, a manager and supervisor called me just now. They expressed concern over the support I received during the call, and were ready to help me fix the registry issue, which was thankfully already resolved. I outlined the troubleshooting steps I've taken, they agreed that I tried all the easy fixes, and said that the person to talk to was someone with much more Ai Squared/Zoomtext knowledge to their Freedom Scientific/JAWS knowledge, who was out on vacation and could call me next week. Overall the people I spoke with seemed fairly competent and helpful. They sent me over a 90 day trial code (versus running in 40 minute mode) to troubleshoot the problem. While they didn't have an immediate solution to my issues with Zoomtext, I appreciated both their willingness to follow up on the issue as well as their acknowledgement that a mistake had been made by the previous person I spoke with.

10/10 experience all around.

I'm looking into a new braille display, and since I prefer a QWERTY keyboard over braille input, I'm a little interested in the Mantis Q40. Does anyone own it and use it with iOS? any quirks to know about? Does the QWERTY input actually work with iOS? (I own an apex QT where it doesn't.) https://www.aph.org/product/mantis-q40

I also saw that Orbit Research is coming out with, basically, a screenless windows 11 laptop with a built-in braille display (the Optima) but that isn't shipping til 2024. Not sure if it might be worth waiting to see what it looks like when it comes out. https://www.orbitresearch.com/product/optima/

Alternately, what braille displays are currently worth looking at? My primary interests are basic reading on the device (bonus if it supports epub) and using it on iOS and windows.