Announcement from HumanWare

Greetings. I received the following announcement from an email list. Well, it was only a matter of time before this kind of announcement came from them. No matter how much a company may want to have more than one version of their product out on the market, sooner or later, they will yield to the more recent version and drop support/development for the older one. Granted, HumanWare's still going to support the Classic models of BrailleNote and VoiceNotes, but how long will that last? There may come a time when that is dropped too. Anyway, enjoy the following. And, if you still own one of the classic models, its probably about time you upgrade to the newer mPower, or even better, a PAC Mate, :) As always, please excuse any formatting errors.

SUPPORT FOR BRAILLENOTE AND VOICENOTE CLASSIC

In June 2005, HumanWare released the next generation of information
management systems for the blind, BrailleNote and VoiceNote mPower. To thank
our loyal customer base for their support, we made two commitments.

Firstly, because we appreciate that funding for assistive technology may
only be available to an individual once every few years, we undertook to
release new versions of Key Soft for the BrailleNote and VoiceNote Classic
for as long as possible.

Secondly, we introduced our extremely popular transplant programme, allowing
BrailleNote Classic customers the chance to have our latest technology for
around a third of the cost of a new unit in the case of those owning 32-cell
models.

The transplant programme will continue into the foreseeable future , giving
customers access to the many benefits available exclusively on BrailleNote
and VoiceNote mPower. However, as we start to plan for exciting future
enhancements to KeySoft, it is becoming clear that many of the features we
wish to add are not technically possible on the Classic platform. On that
basis, HumanWare is giving notice that KeySoft 7.2 will be the second to
last upgrade available for the Classic family. There will be a final update
for BrailleNote classic released next year. For this reason, once KeySoft
7.2 is released, software maintenance agreements will no longer be available
for the BrailleNote and VoiceNote Classic.

We wish to stress that technical support and servicing will still be
available for BrailleNote Classic, which continues to be a powerful
information management tool.

Please also note that should you take advantage of the transplant programme,
any counts remaining on your Software maintenance Agreement will be
transferred to your BrailleNote mPower.

Should you have any queries, as always, please don't hesitate to contact
your nearest HumanWare office.

Jonathan Mosen
BrailleNote Product Marketing Manager
HumanWare
Christchurch New Zealand