26 percent of 300 million is more than 75 million. If only one percent of that number meets the requirement you are laying out, that's 750,000 potential customers. Say you can get a thousand bucks from each of those customers (absolutely dirt cheap at the current going rates for equipment of that nature). Does three-quarters of a billion dollars perk a little more interest?
You obviously haven't seen the markup that gets put on computer equipment that qualifies as a medical device. Take a look around on the Dynavox website (www.dynavoxtech.com) and see if any of those gadgets look terribly complicated or difficult to replicate. Then look at the price list. The cheapest gadget (palmtop) goes for $3000+. The laptop-sized device goes for about $8000 unless it has the eyegaze system, which goes for an additional $7000, bringing the total to a cool $15,000 per unit. All covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and most major medical insurance.
I have been using Dasher for the vast majority of my typing needs for the past year. I was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) about two years ago and have slowly lost the use of my left hand and arm during those two years. Dasher is commonly recommended to paraplegic and quadriplegic patients. I know several ALS patients who use it with eyegaze or headmouse setups and love it. It should be usable on any *NIX system that supports GNOME. There are also Windows binaries available.
Another possibility that can be used is an onscreen keyboard with dwell clicking for the mouse and word prediction capability in the keyboard software. I know that both xvkbd and the GNOME onscreen keyboard (GOK) both support word prediction. There are also a couple of projects that have adapted the Dasher word prediction engine into an interface like a telephone keypad that could also be used with dwell-clicking to provide a decent interface. Seems to me one of those projects was called Tapir and the other one was called dKeys.
If anybody becomes interested in this kind of stuff and decides to take on a role in contributing to some of these accessible software projects, you will have the appreciation of hundreds of thousands of disabled users worldwide. Not a bad reward for a little bit of work.
According to a friend of mine who works at RedHat, MacMillan hasn't been providing any support for their previous versions of RedHat distributions. When he determines that a user has the MacMillan version of RedHat and tells the user to call MacMillan for tech support, the user invariably tells my friend that MacMillan told him to call RedHat with his problems.
I wouldn't bet on getting any more tech support from MacMillan than they currently offer -- unless you are willing to fork out some additional $$$ beyond the cost of the shrink-wrapped box. Even then, I'd bet that they'll pass you along to RedHat or Mandrake for any problem beyond the installation.
I've also heard that RedHat and MacMillan are currently involved in some litigation over the use of the RedHat name and trademarks. This might explain why MacMillan switched to Mandrake.
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26 percent of 300 million is more than 75 million. If only one percent of that number meets the requirement you are laying out, that's 750,000 potential customers. Say you can get a thousand bucks from each of those customers (absolutely dirt cheap at the current going rates for equipment of that nature). Does three-quarters of a billion dollars perk a little more interest?
You obviously haven't seen the markup that gets put on computer equipment that qualifies as a medical device. Take a look around on the Dynavox website (www.dynavoxtech.com) and see if any of those gadgets look terribly complicated or difficult to replicate. Then look at the price list. The cheapest gadget (palmtop) goes for $3000+. The laptop-sized device goes for about $8000 unless it has the eyegaze system, which goes for an additional $7000, bringing the total to a cool $15,000 per unit. All covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and most major medical insurance.
I have been using Dasher for the vast majority of my typing needs for the past year. I was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) about two years ago and have slowly lost the use of my left hand and arm during those two years. Dasher is commonly recommended to paraplegic and quadriplegic patients. I know several ALS patients who use it with eyegaze or headmouse setups and love it. It should be usable on any *NIX system that supports GNOME. There are also Windows binaries available.
Another possibility that can be used is an onscreen keyboard with dwell clicking for the mouse and word prediction capability in the keyboard software. I know that both xvkbd and the GNOME onscreen keyboard (GOK) both support word prediction. There are also a couple of projects that have adapted the Dasher word prediction engine into an interface like a telephone keypad that could also be used with dwell-clicking to provide a decent interface. Seems to me one of those projects was called Tapir and the other one was called dKeys.
If anybody becomes interested in this kind of stuff and decides to take on a role in contributing to some of these accessible software projects, you will have the appreciation of hundreds of thousands of disabled users worldwide. Not a bad reward for a little bit of work.
Believe it or not, there is a Winboard/XBoard chess engine named Beowulf.
It's open source, too.
According to a friend of mine who works at RedHat, MacMillan hasn't been providing any support for their previous versions of RedHat distributions. When he determines that a user has the MacMillan version of RedHat and tells the user to call MacMillan for tech support, the user invariably tells my friend that MacMillan told him to call RedHat with his problems.
I wouldn't bet on getting any more tech support from MacMillan than they currently offer -- unless you are willing to fork out some additional $$$ beyond the cost of the shrink-wrapped box. Even then, I'd bet that they'll pass you along to RedHat or Mandrake for any problem beyond the installation.
I've also heard that RedHat and MacMillan are currently involved in some litigation over the use of the RedHat name and trademarks. This might explain why MacMillan switched to Mandrake.