Victor Reader Stream Gripes
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009The current version of HumanWare’s Victor Reader Stream portable player is great. But it has a couple shortcomings that surprised me.
For one, its USB port behaves as, and transfers data as slowly as a USB1.1 port, even though USB 2.0 has been the standard since around 2002. Also, USB 2.0 is hot-pluggable. That is, when you connect a USB 2.0 device to your computer when that device is already switched on, the computer should automatically recognize the device and add it to its list of drives accessible to Windows Explorer. But the Victor Reader requires that you connect it when it’s turned off only, then turn it on afterwards. This needlessly complicate the procedure and could have been eliminated if the Stream designers would have built in a fully-compliant USB 2.0 port.
The Victor Reader Stream also lacks an internal clock, so that the 3gp files it creates when you record a note are assigned no timestamp; the Access Time, Creation Time, and Modification Time fields are left blank. This makes it hard to keep track of when a file was created; a real handy feature this would be when you’re using the Victor Reader to record classes or to make entries in an audio journal like I do.
Another curious thing about Victor Reader is that it requires a separate adapter for charging; it cannot charge from the USB port like iPods do. Perhaps the charge current is too high for USB cables to handle.
The Victor Reader Stream is quite the accessible device for anyone needing it. But it does need improvement. Hopefully, the next version will fix these port and clock problems.