I have a couple comments. First, last summer we looked extensively at newegg.com. Other than some low-end motherboards, the majority did not have serial ports or headers. They were obviously designed for gamers. They had great onboard audio and tons of USB ports, but no serial. We found a grand total of about two. This was last summer, so I can't help but think the situation has only become worse. Even then, it was limited to one or two brands. We did find one, but it took some hunting. I think it's for servers. I have two answers why I personally refuse to use software speech on my desktop. First, it's a matter of preference. I don't like ESpeak. It is free and that is good, but I find it hard to understand. In the case of the Ubuntu live CD, it chops off words, making it almost useless. Secondly, not all sound cards are supported or are supported properly. Many desktops come with Nvidia chipsets. HP is definitely one. Yes, there are Nvidia drivers, but they are not free. Either you have to install probably buggy non-free drivers which might or might not work or you have no sound, period. That also applies to the Ubuntu install. The sighted person who uses the HP machine complained that the installer screws up the font on the monitor until after the installation is complete and the non-free drivers are set up. In my case, Linux supports my sound card but at a very low volume. I've tried everything I can think of in amixer but even at full volume, it's only a whisper. Windows doesn't have that problem. On 2/11/2010 9:00 AM, John G. Heim wrote: > Maybe its accurate to say that *most* modern motherboards don't have > serial ports. I question even that. But you didn't address my > questions about how you determined your priorities. We both agree that > most servers have serial ports. That seems unlikely to change any time > soon. So I don't understand why its so important to you to have > hardware speech on your desktop. I understand it for servers. In fact, > that was part of my original point -- having speakup in the kernel is > very important if you need to find out what a server won't boot or why > it can't get a network connection. But on your desktop, why don't you > just use software speech? In fact, why don't you just get one PC for > yourself with a serial port and use software speech on all the other > desktops that you do support on. That's what I do even though all of > our PCs have serial ports.
