Welcome Ari. I think you have hit on four of the biggest reason why switching is appealing for screen reader users. Here are some more: http://home.adelphia.net/~bmss/vo/reasons.html
That Access World article was all wet, very disappointing. Here is a list of most of the problems with it: http://home.adelphia.net/~bmss/vo/aw060505fix.html Those URLs are expected to go dark sometime.
