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From: Dave.Tanner@p0.f210.n273.z1.fidonet.org (Dave Tanner)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Visions 3.0
Message-ID: <16573@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jan 91 04:59:09 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

In a message of <06 Dec 90  21:34:40>, Walter Siren (1:396/5.18) writes:

 > > >     That all sounds good, but you forgot the most important thing.  How 
 >much does it cost?  Do they have demos available?

Walter!!!

My friend, how can a company put out demos of their software.
After all you need their dedicated speech board to even run the
software.  And, even if you happen to be a registered Artic user
with one of the original Sonix 200 or 220 boards it will cost you
$270 to upgrade to the new Business Visions plus giving up that
synthesisor that can be used with more speech software packages
than just Artic's software.  Their philosophy seems to be a
philosophy that you either commit yourself to using their software
exclusively for the next several years or you use some other
software and synthesisor.  And, they want you to buy without the
opportunity to try it out and see if it is really going to meet
your needs.

For myself, I can't accept any speech package today that locks
themselves into their synthesisor and excludes the use of other
speech products without additional expense or just doesn't allow it
at all.  You will note that the Soundingboard and Vocal-eyes are
not linked in such a way that you can't use other software on the
Soundingboard.  But, a greedy Artic Tech is more interested in
getting your money and not so interested in helping the user.  I
sincerely that the new speech product out of Kentuckey changes
their mind about being tied to only one synthesisor too or I am
afraid there are a lot of blinks and a lot of agencies for the
blind that are just going to refuse to pop for the price of another
speech software and hardware when they can get a good software for
an existing synthesisor much cheaper.
     D. T.

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