The Coburn Blog

okay, now that I am no longer blacklisted from my own website, hehe, I can make a post to my blog. Oh that was just too funny. For anyone running Wordpress, there is an update to Bad Behavior that fixes a bug from blog owners being blacklisted from their own blogs. Oh that is too funny.

Anyway, this is soo cool! The company that developed the software I use to read the computer screen with, aisquared, has just released a new product called Zoomtext USB that I am extremely happy about today!

The great thing about this product, is it will open up the world of working with Computers for a living, for me . Oh man, you just can’t imagine how excited I am about this product. The product will set me back $100 for the upgrade, which I am hoping I get for Christmas so I can purchase this thing. I don’t know, I hope so.

What is so neat about this, I’ll be able to take my copy of Zoomtext, with me to any Computer I do service on, so lets say I’m working for a company, and they want me to do field work at someones house. All I’d have to do, is plug this little baby in, and instantly have the ability to work on that clients Computer, without having to put any special software on it. This will open up a world of possibilities for me. Field Technician, Systems Administrator, Network Engineer, whatever field I decide to get into. I must say, this has got to be, the coolest thing.

Only drawback I can see with it at this point, is I would have to have Administrative privileges on the machine I would be working on, in order for this USB drive software to work. Unfortunately, USB 2.0 isn’t as fast as internal hard drives, so there are still some components that require installation. I’ll know more about that when I get ahold of one to play with, but basically you have to purchase the USB drive with the software and license key on it, and it runs the software plug and play style from the USB drive. I imagine its just the core speech components that have to be installed, which is no big deal, it would be like requiring the Java runtime files, just core components that the software needs in order to run, but that is the only drawback I see to this.

They claim that it can be run from any public computer, like a library computer for example. I’ll believe that when I see it, is what I say. I’m just thinking, most library Computers, are on limited accounts, or use XP Professionals Group Policy Editor, to block out the public from installing or saving anything to the hard drive. I know that, because learning that was part of one of my homework assignments for IT Technician class, so I’m not real sure how thats going to work. It would be nice to see an option to run completely from the USB drive if administrative privileges are not possible. Even if it takes a performance hit, it would be better then nothing.

but aside from that, I think this is the best product since sliced bread. It will continue to open up the world of Computers, to blind and visually impaired individuals around the world. All I can say, is “Way to go aisquared” on this.