Freedom Scientific has announced two major additions to its PAC Mate family of accessible Pocket PC devices for the blind. Orders are now being taken for the new PAC Mate BX400 and PAC Mate QX400. These units use Microsoft's Pocket PC 2003 software and JAWS for Windows. The processor is a high performance Intel X scale 400 MHz processor.

These new PAC Mate models feature a revolutionary new modular approach, providing significant user benefits in the areas of affordability and convenience.

The BX400 and QX400 are Braille in/Speech out and QWERTY in/Speech out units, respectively, and you can clip on one of Freedom Scientific's currently shipping 20-cell and 40-cell PAC Mate Portable Braille Displays if you want a unit with integrated Braille. Simply remove a plastic cover piece from either unit, and the PAC Mate Braille Display snaps into the BX400 or QX400 to form an integrated unit.

The PAC Mate BX400 and QX400 can be converted from a speech-only device to an integrated Braille Display device and back again in seconds. Because the PAC Mate Portable Braille Display can be quickly and easily removed, it also can be used as your PC or laptop Braille display.

By making an industry standard platform accessible, Freedom Scientific has opened the door for its customers to access Microsoft's Pocket PC software that includes Windows, Outlook, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and desktop synchronization. The PAC Mate can also utilize other popular third-party software and hardware compatible with Pocket PC.

This functionality makes PAC Mate a sound long-term investment because it's an accessible, mainstream computing device that always will be compatible with the latest software and hardware. And, if you are a JAWS user, then you already know how to use a PAC Mate.