Sunday, July 8

The PAC Mate Omni

Greetings. After long last, an upgrade for the PAC Mate is coming. It was officially announced this past week at the National Federation of the Blind and American Council of the Blind conventions. For those that missed the convention or announcement, or want more details, then check out the PAC Mate Omni press release. As a PAC Mate user, I'm grately looking forward to this upgrade. Though I hate to be apart from my technology I rely upon, I'll gladly send my unit in if they're going to perform this sort of upgrading to it. In case you're interested, it would be a good thing to do any maintenance or repairs to your unit before the new version comes out. FS in fact said that they won't do any upgrading if your unit is not working perfectly. Also, the pricing structure that FS has announced is pretty great too; think of it, paying from only $299 to $699 for an upgrade like this. That sounds a lot better than the nearly $2,000 that HumanWare was charging a few years ago when they introduced the BrailleNote mPowers. Since my hardware and software agreements are up to date, I'll only pay $299 for this upgrade. As the date gets closer, Freedom Scientific will announce other details about how the upgrade process will work, as well as other enhancements to the PAC Mate. For now though let's enjoy the moment and the news.

2 comments:

  1. Was FS showing this new model at the NFB convention? If so, did you get a chance to check it out? If yes, what were your impressions?

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  2. Hi Darrell. No, they weren't showing this new model. Jonathan Mosen used it to demonstrate the new features, an said that they have a few prototypes at the convention, but they didn't let anyone look at them. He did say that there will be no outward hardware difference; that the Omni will look exactly like the current PM model. The major difference will be what's on the inside.

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