@simon@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel Man, the BT Speak is something I really want, and really have absolutely no use for, and thus can't justify purchasing in any way.
@simon@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield Me too, but if they could support Affirm, then I might justify it. I guess I could build my own with a Raspberry pi and my Hable one, then 3d print a shell for it.
@modulux@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@simon Also, like, it's just a Raspberry Pie with a special case. If I had more time and willpower I could make something similar for a lot less money. And yet, I still want it! Even knowing exactly how overpriced it is.
@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux@simon To clarify this tweet in a direct reply, my use of the word "overpriced" was expressed unclearly. As someone who is highly technical and owns multiple raspberry pies, multiple Linux machines, has access to a 3d printer, and so-on, it's far harder for me to justify the price (that is both real and fair) that support, software development, updates, etc, etc involves. What I was trying to express was that for me, I could get the components much cheaper, and spend my time instead of my money building something vaguely similar. But I haven't spent either time or money on it, because both time and money are limitted resources, and the BT Speak is something I want badly, not need badly.
@mcourcel@DavidGoldfield@modulux@simon I do not. But I have two friends, each of whom live within ten minutes of me, who do. The Ottawa Public Library also has several, and you can submit files to them if you have a design to print.
@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux Pretty much all of this. I don't have any conception of what a fair price is for the unit along with the software and support, I just know there are only so many things I can spend money on, and 1200 US is a whole lot of money.
@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux I have a GPD Micro (the cheaper smaller version) that has not come anywhere near exploding. it's still holding up well 3 years after I got it, and it was used.
@simon@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux Interesting. I have the giant, swollen, pregnant looking GPD in a cupboard right beside me. When I contacted them they basically said "Tough luck, buddy."
@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux That's pretty bad. I don't blame you for being frustrated. And they're certainly not free of complaints about their quality. You should be able to pop that battery out and replace it yourself, but also you shouldn't have to.
@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux Also I don't know for sure about that laptop, but I know a lot of their stuff is pretty easy to disassemble, so replacing the battery shouldn't be hard in the worst case.
@simon@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux Right, but when I want to take my laptop apart, I already have a Framework 16 LOL. The thing that makes me want a BT Speak is Linux that's actually supported and accessible and maybe works most of the time.
@modulux@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel You could probably install Linux on it. And it is far more powerful. It happens to have a touchscreen but also has a built-in keyboard.
@simon@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@modulux Yes, but every time I get a new kernel I get to lose accessibility. And I get to fight with sound drivers and video drivers and all the rest. The BT Speak makes everything but userland someone else's problem. That's almost worth paying for. Almost.
@simon@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel It's not a bad notion, having a really light and powerful laptop is certainly a nice idea. It doesn't really fit the desire the BT Speak does though, to me at least: braille input, instant (ish) on, very long battery life...
@modulux@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@simon Sadly, if it could run the old basic programs that needed run.bns and compile.bns, I'd probably already have one ROFL. I spent so many days in battle.bas instead of listening to whatever the middle school teacher was on about.
@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@simon That's one part of the BNS that we pretty much got no access to in Spain, unfortunately. On the other hand it may have made me really waste time. I already did silly things like writing circular macros to try to do stuff, or make rhythms with the clicks it made.
@modulux@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@simon I somehow found Basic stuff and played Daniel Zingaro, Bpc Programs and Braillesoft's games. Found a manual to, and learned Basic (my first programming language) without doing anything useful with it. Sadly didn't manage to enter Blazie's ftp to get more stuff because I thought anonymous was with an I (stupid, stupid Eloquence).
@sukiletxe@fastfinge@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel@simon Reminds me of an incredibly silly mistake I made while learning C. I was learning from a taped manual, and when I got to the file handling part, I kept getting really weird errors from Turbo C when I wrote file *my_file; type things.
Only years later I would find out that the correct way to declare a file pointer is to use FILE, in capitals.
@mcourcel@DavidGoldfield@modulux@simon How did you not know about this? You got the interpreter and compiler from the Blazie website via ftp. Then you loaded it onto your BNS. The FTP site had a bunch of examples of geometry calculations and a to-do list in a desperate effort to hide that what this was really for was playing silly games written by Dan Zingaro. In fact, you can still get the compiler from: mail.nfbnet.org/files/bns/BASICBNS.ZIP
@modulux@fastfinge@simon@DavidGoldfield@mcourcel Luckily my wants started when there was no such thing and so I wanted a Pi (with some justification, which funnily enough didn't work). I got a Pi, not before I was scammed. And now I use it to host znc, to test stuff before friends host them (I'm behind CGNAT). Oh, and to do stuff I could perfectly do in WSL.
