First, I have produced JAWS for Windows scripts to support this release of iTunes, and yes they do function with the latest release which is 7.0.2.  However, I would advise you not to upgrade from iTunes 6 unless you really have to.  Apart from the change in the design of the program requiring separate JAWS scripts, we are unable to support JAWS 7.10.  The visual changes in the product are so different to the extent that JAWS 7.10 has tremendous difficulties in interpreting some of the information on the screen with the JAWS Cursor accurately enough to be anywhere near reliable, and I will not release a product version which I know to be unstable even in part.

So the reality is at the moment unless things change, you can use iTunes 7 but only up to and including JAWS 7.0.  This is unfortunate as you may need to upgrade to iTunes 7 because:

A. The new iPods rely on this and

B. If you update the firmware in your older iPod, iTunes version 7 is required as the older iPod Updater program no longer deals with that situation.

I have provided a link above to the iTunes scripts so you can read about them if you wish to do that.  We are now up to version 3.0 of scripts to support iTunes 6 and 7 as there are now two downloadable programmes. 

For the avoidance of doubt, iTunes version 6 is supported up to and including JAWS 7.10.

I thought a lot about whether I wanted an Edirol R09 from Roland or the Plextalk PTR2 available from RNIB and for what I want to be able to do, I decided that the Plextalk for me was the better unit. Clearly this recorder is larger than the R09, and it is a DAISY recorder and the built-in microphone is certainly not as good as the R09. However, especially when used with an external microphone or sound mixer, this is a wonderful piece of equipment.

I wanted a recorder allowing me to produce material in daisy format if required (which it is quite often), which also gives me the ability to store large quantities of recordings without the need to connect it to a PC or use a card reader within a computer to transfer the material, and which gives me extremely comprehensive audio editing capabilities without the need again to use a computer.

The PTR2 gives me all of that and a lot more. I have a 6 GB storage card which gives me approximately 105 hours of recording storage using MP3 128K stereo, or a variety of other time lengths depending upon the file format and bit rate I choose to use during recording.

The biggest advantage of the PTR2 of course is that it speaks everything. This includes the recording level status, the elapsed time of a recording, battery status, whether you are in record mode or record/pause mode – as I say all its features. Best of all, this information can be heard through headphones without intruding into the audio recording which is incredibly useful.

One of the other functions I have found invaluable is that you cannot only edit material after the recording is made, but also during the recording process. For example, if I make a mistake during recording, I can go back and overwrite the material. In addition, if I decide after recording the spoken output that I want to insert a table of contents, I can do that just by navigating to the point in the recording where it should be placed, and start the recording.  Everything I record is inserted; the machine does not overwrite the recording already made.

In summary, this machine gives me the ability to record material and edit it on the storage card, and then without the need for any external devices, write the finished product to audio or DAISY CD. Moreover, at least if I was in a conference-like situation, I could guarantee the output of my recording was going to be of a high quality and could make appropriate adjustments for example to the recording level should I need to. I would also be able to mark sections of importance either during or after the recording process which would be very useful for reference purposes.

From my Portable Player Portal web site, I shall be creating a page containing links to resources about the PTR2.

I have some good news and some bad news regarding the June 28 iPod update.

If you have a Shuffle, go get it right away. It fixes several bugs. Some

iTunes music files that wouldn’t rewind or fast forward before now do, and

Format 4 Audible books which wouldn’t play in the Shuffle now do. I haven’t

had a chance to find out whether the Audible bookmarking problems have been

resolved, but this seems to be an improvement.

If you use an iPod with Rockbox, however, you may have problems. If I have

the Rockbox bootloader installed, no music in the iTunes database on my iPod

will play when the Apple firmware is running. If I uninstall the

bootloader, however, this content will play. If you don’t have any

protected content, like Audible books or iTunes music store tracks, you

should be able to use this firmware without problems. but if you do, you’ll

have to install the bootloader to play content in Rockbox and uninstall to

play protected content. I have reported this to the Rockbox list; I hope

there will be a fix soon.

During the presentation, I work through which files you need to download and how to install Rockbox as a visually impaired person using a screen-reader.

It is very refreshing when you hear an item which is interesting and where a great deal of time has obviously been put into the subject delivery and the technical presentation.

Michael Lang has a great deal of experience in using and commenting upon the merits and flaws of different audio recorders, such as the PTR2 and the Edirol products. But apart from that, Tim asks some very good questions and has paid particular attention to the editing of the interview to ensure you only hear relevant content.

The item is concluded with a brief discussion about Rockbox and MP3 players which is also very interesting. Michael has both the PTR1 and the PTR2 recorders and, since I would really like to own a PTR machine, I would love to know the differences between both products. Are there any audio reviews available yet of the PTR2?

I did not know this programme had been archived, but I have just found it and here is a link to listen to it.