I took the vOICe out to the shopping mall (The Select City Walk) once again. This time, I made two changes to the configuration of my netbook. I set the power scheme to maximum performance and I used a program switch speed for windows xp to set it to maximize the performance of the netbook’s CPU. I made these changes after a discussion with Peter as a test. What was happening was that the vOICe would stop giving me input. It almost seemed to hang. Mind you, my netbook is an Asus eee pc with 512MB of ram running Windows XP pro sp2. The problem remains as in there are times when the vOICe stops giving me any output or, sometimes when it is giving me output and I try to access it’s menus, I cannot do so. Jaws v9 works ok but the vOICe seems to slow down.

However, the maximizing of the CPU’s usage helped though the battery was exhausted after about 2 hours.

1. I found it easier to distinguish doorways.

2. The tiles on the wall were clearly visible.

3. I could tell when we were looking at columns and pillars.

4. I had an aha moment when I saw a rectangular speaker. The rectangle was like the one in exercise mode. The same applies to circular speakers that were mounted on shelves.

5. I had a look at a lot of curios and other items including toy cars. The toy cars soundscapes reminded nme of what I used to see when using the vOICe on the road. This was logical.

6. We went to a restaurant and there was a buffet lunch. I tried looking at different food items but they all seemed to look the same.

7. I found a strange glass that had a short stem and a large bowl like structure where the water was filled. Think of it like a vine glass with a short stem and a very large glass. I sensed it as a flattish circle more like a bowl so I was unable to find it visually until my dad explained the shape of the glass to me.

8. looking at people was interesting. They often blocked the light and are quite squishy.

Pranav