Frankly, I would just go with software speech--especially if you have a decent audio system on that laptop and are able to play other audio while getting software speech. To my mind any kind of attachment on a laptop is a nuisance, whether its a serial cable to an external synth, or a pcmcia card plus the cable and the hw synth, or a usb cable and synth for that matter. I believe laptops are more easily used without extra appendages hanging off every port. Lorne Webber writes: > while we're on the topic of conversion into serial, another option that I'm > thinking about is PCMCIA to serial. > I too have a laptop that is sadly lacking a serial port, as well as Zack, I > know at least one other person right off who doesn't have a serial port on > their laptop. It looks like their going the way of 3 1/2 inch floppy drives > on laptops, obviously I prefer having a floppy drive, and of course a serial > port too. > I'm afraid this is becoming a trend, and the community is going to have to > adapt to it. > obviously USB to serial is probably not the answer, but I found a company > that manufactures PCMCIA to serial, and, I figure, Because they share > electronic fundamentals with native bus architectures such as PCI and ISA, > they function exactly like standard COM ports and should be able to be > addressed as such by most application software. > (of course that's also what the manufactures say about USB to serial > converters), > the address for the particular product I'm interested in is: > http://www.quatech.com/catalog/rs232_pcmcia.php > I'm curious what you folks think about this possibility, its drawbacks as > well as its benefits. one benefit besides the obvious one if it succeeds, is > that the frequency of a laptop not having both a serial and PCMCIA port is > virtually unheard of, but again, I could be wrong, and If I am, please tell > me. > > Thanks. > Lorne > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Janina Sajka, Chair Accessibility Workgroup Free Standards Group (FSG) janina at freestandards.org Phone: +1 202.494.7040
