|
It is exactly what I needed,it has a lot of words and translations and the price is great.I'm happy about my purchase.
I constantly had to keep going to a regular dictionary. When I called the company they said "sorry, we don't cover that."Also, the English dictionary is horrible. The Spanish to English and vice versa is ok but extremely low level. Many times I would input a word in English and it gave me a very similar word in Spanish, only adding the a for the gender difference (masculine or feminine).The batteries always died within a month. There were more words that I could not find than find.
Use a BlackBerry for 2 minutes, and you will wonder how Franklin could have chosen these keys. The next most serious problem is the keypad. Since I use the Back key a lot to correct a misspelling when making an entry, it would be far more convenient to have it where a backspace key normally would be so I could move my thumb just a bit to backspace. There must be some funky way of counting "translations" to get to 5 million. By the way, you can also change the duration of the automatic turn-off feature from 1 to 5 minutes in 1 minute increments, though limiting it to 5 minutes is a bad design choice by Franklin. One tip that is essential here. Changing that made a big difference. The letters are so dotty sometimes that it drives me dotty.
My BlackBerry is half the width of this device but far more usable for entering text.Next, the placement of the function keys was dictated by some notion of visual design, not for usability. If I hold the device so I can read the screen and press the letter keys, I can't read print on the function keys. (Answer: they are dirt cheap and look "pretty" from a distance). No way, no how. I have to tilt the device to change the viewing angle so the print on the keys shows up. Franklin, by the way, not Merriam-Webster, is responsible for this deception since they are the ones marketing the device.The foremost problem with the device is the screen.
They are keys with a dark background with very fine light print on them. If I had paid money for this device, I would have returned it immediately. The print on the function keys is silver in color. Nothing like you would see on an original iPod, for example.
The Back key is where the Question Mark key should be and vice versa. Fortunately, this was a gift, and I appreciated the sentiment. The Enter key which is also used a lot is also inconveniently placed. In terms of legibility, the letter keys are fine. To be blunt, it's a crappy LCD screen. YOU CAN CHANGE THE CHARACTER SIZE. Each has a light background with a large, dark letter on it, but the keys that perform a function, such as space, enter, back, cap, menu, clear, etc., are terrible.
Moreover, while having the function keys be a different color than the letter keys might be a reasonable design choice (though there are a gazillion computer keyboards where the color of all the keys is the same), Franklin should have used a light color for the function key with black print.Next, the keys themselves are flat, mushy keys. Then press Enter to select "SETTINGS." Scroll down to "TYPE SIZE" and choose "LARGE." My device came with the type size set at medium, and at times it was absolutely illegible. With all due respect to Marlon Brando's character in On The Waterfrom, "This coulda been a contender." But like his character, it turned out to be a bum.The dictionary seems to be OK, but the claim of 5 million translations can only be marketing hype. Go to the opening screen for "BOOKS" (use the "back" key to get there if you've been using the device and aren't there when you turn it on) and press the menu key for "SETUP." The menu keys are the five keys right below the screen, and in this case, it's on the far right (under "SETUP"). There is plenty of room on the function keys to expand the print, but Franklin didn't take advantage of that.
Slow to initialize, hard to see, cumbersome to use. Otherwise it is a nice translator.
Its a fun way to build vocabulary. I ended up guessing at the 'you, he, she, it' forms of the verbs instead. I wanted help having conversations with people asking them about themselves or other people/things not just always talking about myself. You guess the word then have the option to look up the definition. I found the conjugation feature frustrating. Only the 'I' form of the verb is listed which is limiting. I did enjoy learning new words and definitions with the hangman game.
|
