[Mulak]

hey y'all

I'm 18 years old student from ontario, canada graduating from high school this year and I got accepted to Sheridan College for business adminstration. I was browsing through cnet.com and was looking at gagdets stuff and saw a Blackberry. i did some research about it with deaf people, so i was wondering would a blackberry be helpful during college? and also when i get a job, would a blackberry help me to communciate to other executives? and does a blackberry have a feature that talks on the cellphone?

This is only a few questions for now basic stuff

Mulak

[dougdoug99]

It has TTY (I think that is the phone add on for deaf people?) I've never actually tried it because I'm not sure what it is/how it works.

[jibi]

I'm sure Mark will chime in on this when he notices. He's deaf and seems to love his handheld.

[kaos]

Until then, you might find the following threads usefull:

BlackBerry Advantages For The Deaf & Hard Of Hearing

Voicemail Service With Voice-To-Text Automatic Transcription

[kharvel]

Go here to get answers to all your questions:

http://alldeaf.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9

Mark Rejohn has posted very informative threads in that forum regarding Blackberry usage for deaf people. His threads convincede me to get a Blackberry 7730 since it supports real-time TDD as well as My IP Relay (your own personal phone number!).

[Steve]

Welcome to BBForums, Mulak!

My wife is Deaf and I'm hard-of-hearing. We both use ATTW/Cingular 7290's. Our previous 2-way pagers were Motorola T900 Talkabouts and Blackberry 850's.

We absolutely love our personal 7290's! We sync ours with each of our own MS Outlook2003 at home. We haven't hooked them up at work.

Many companies out there have found the Blackberry a valuable communication tool. I think it would be a huge plus in college.

Today, I bought a Motorola H820 bluetooth headset to try out. Volume could be better, but I could hear the other party without the unit touching my CIC hearing aid. They could hear me better than the wired headset that came with it. So, it works well as a phone too.

I did try the TTY setting to call my TTY at work, but nothing happened. I believe I was supposed to plug the BB into a portable TTY, but that seems redundant as there is a keyboard right on the BB! I could use help here if anyone knows.

Good luck!

Steve

The Final Frontier!

[piglet]

Congrats, Mulak, on your high school graduation and acceptance into college. I think that getting a BlackBerry would be a fantastic graduation present! I'm hard of hearing and find my BB to be an asset in communication, not to mention lots of fun. As for the BB being useful for college, I'm not quite sure how it would help with your studies as I went to college long ago. As for my work, I work with many people in a three-county area, and I find my BB to be a great tool to keep in touch with my main office. Most people I come in contact at work with are great about using email rather than leaving voice messages on my phone (which I have to get people to help me "translate" sometimes). With the BB, I have access to emails most places where I'm at (t-mobile doesn't have the greatest coverage in the rural areas that I cover).

Good luck with choosing your BlackBerry and enjoy!

[piglet]

Steve quoted: "Today, I bought a Motorola H820 bluetooth headset to try out. Volume could be better, but I could hear the other party without the unit touching my CIC hearing aid. They could hear me better than the wired headset that came with it. So, it works well as a phone too."

Steve, I have a question about the headset you mentioned. Is it anything like a neckloop that works with the t-coil of hearing aids? I have one for my Nokia cell phone which I rarely use, but haven't been able to find one for the BB. I know that my 7230 doesn't have the bluetooth feature, but was wondering if I did have one with that feature, if I would be able to use a neckloop that works with hearing aids. BTW, what's a CIC hearing aid?

[Steve]

Originally Posted by piglet

Steve quoted: "Today, I bought a Motorola H820 bluetooth headset to try out. Volume could be better, but I could hear the other party without the unit touching my CIC hearing aid. They could hear me better than the wired headset that came with it. So, it works well as a phone too."

Steve, I have a question about the headset you mentioned. Is it anything like a neckloop that works with the t-coil of hearing aids? I have one for my Nokia cell phone which I rarely use, but haven't been able to find one for the BB. I know that my 7230 doesn't have the bluetooth feature, but was wondering if I did have one with that feature, if I would be able to use a neckloop that works with hearing aids. BTW, what's a CIC hearing aid?

Unfortuneatly, I doubt it is t-coil compatible. My completely-in-canal (CIC) aid sets flush with the end of the ear canal, so the speaker portion of the H820 doesn't touch it. If it did, it would make a lot of racket.

If it were T-coil compatible and I had a behind-the-ear (BTE) aid, I'd want to wear it over my other (deaf) ear and let the t-coil signal pick it up. I hope you can find one someday!

The perfect combination I'd like is a Bluetooth hearing aid, then clip a BT microphone to my shirt. Sharing my headset with my glasses frames isn't the greatest fit.

Steve
The Final Frontier!

[piglet]

Originally Posted by Steve

Unfortuneatly, I doubt it is t-coil compatible. My completely-in-canal (CIC) aid sets flush with the end of the ear canal, so the speaker portion of the H820 doesn't touch it. If it did, it would make a lot of racket.

If it were T-coil compatible and I had a behind-the-ear (BTE) aid, I'd want to wear it over my other (deaf) ear and let the t-coil signal pick it up. I hope you can find one someday!

The perfect combination I'd like is a Bluetooth hearing aid, then clip a BT microphone to my shirt. Sharing my headset with my glasses frames isn't the greatest fit.

Steve
The Final Frontier!

I've heard about the new hearing aids that can "communicate" with each other (if one hearing aid volume gets adjusted, then the other one will automatically get adjusted too)--are those using bluetooth technology? Our office is ordering audiological testing equipment for babies and young children using electrodes that uses bluetooth tech. to communicate with the computer eliminating the need for all of those wires and the computer gets a "cleaner" readout. When I first got my BlackBerry just two months ago, I never heard of bluetooth, so I didn't care that my 7230 didn't have that feature. Now all I hear is about bluetooth!!

As for the CIC, I thought that was what you meant, but over here, we call them AIC (all in the canal). I'm assuming that they are the same? Anyway, I can see how it would be easier for those wearing CICs to use the bluetooth headset than those who wear BTEs or even the bigger all-in-the-ear hearing aids.

Hopefully we can soon find the technology so that we can utilize our BBs to the fullest!

Heidi

[Mulak]

What would be most reccommended BB for a college student/business adminstration marketing guy would have?...

I was browsing through the net and saw an article with IBM and BB, check out this site

http://www-306.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_...f/publish/4883

[Mark Rejhon]

BlackBerry 7290, 7250, 7520 are the most recommended models for the deaf right now. Basically, any of the modern 32 megabyte models with brighter screens. I would lean towards the T-Mobile model 7290, which will be released shortly by FuseWireless and other deaf-friendly BlackBerry companies.

The 7100 comes a good one too, if you can do SureType, but a deafie will usually prefer a full keyboard for speed of typing.

[kharvel]

Mark, I don't understand why you are recommending the 72xx and 75xx series Blackberry for deaf people. The screens on those devices are smaller than the 77xx series; granted, the form factor for the former is smaller than for the latter but it would stand to reason that deaf/HOH people would find the bigger screen more useful due to the fact that they would not use the blackberry as a phone. Please comment.

[Mark Rejhon]

Mark, I don't understand why you are recommending the 72xx and 75xx series Blackberry for deaf people. The screens on those devices are smaller than the 77xx series; granted, the form factor for the former is smaller than for the latter but it would stand to reason that deaf/HOH people would find the bigger screen more useful due to the fact that they would not use the blackberry as a phone. Please comment.

The 77XX series:
(1) Do not have much memory for 3rd party software. Such as chat software.
(2) Cannot hold the thousands of emails that the deaf wants to hold
(3) Performs noticeably more slowly (even the 7780 too!)
(4) Are less stylish and more bulky
(5) Are less user friendly, they don't have a TCP/IP stack out of box, you hafta do the pain of installing OS4 on them before chat software works properly.
(6) The 7750, for example, is 5 times slower than the model 7250.
(7) The keyboard is more important. The 7290, 7520 and 7250 keyboards are the best BlackBerry keyboards.

This is why I do not generally recommend the 77XX despite the bigger screen. There are good reasons for the bigger screen, but unless you need thick glasses, the smaller screen is perfectly fine. The other advantages and chat-software user-friendliness of the newer models vastly outweigh everything else.

In the order of ease-of-use, here goes:
7290 on T-Mobile (easiest, since chat software is preinstalled)
7250 on Verizon (network software runs out-of-the-box)
7520 on Nextel (sometimes flaky at first)
7290 on Rogers
7290 on Cingular (a little harder, requires frustrating chats with Cingular CSR's)

Due to TCP/IP blocking issues preventing chat software, do not get a 7250 on Bell Mobility. Also Sprint/Telus is unknown at this time, so I don't trust them just yet -- until I hear that VeriChat and other software "runs out of the box" on them.

HOWEVER... the 7730/7780 models are relatively good if you can work around limitations. Just bear them in mind. You don't need to sell your 7730 if you got everything working, saved a little money, and you were smart enough to do all the upgrades yourself. Then your 77XX can do almost everything the newer models can. Just be lucky you didn't get a 7750. :-D