Hmmm. I think I consider myself lucky. I actually did have one tech support
regarding the upgrade with GW Micro for we 7.0 and the guy was helpful.
----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Clower
To: gw-info-gwmicro.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: we vs jfw
Sky,
That's great, but most of us who have switched to GW Micro's product line
have received less than helpful and/or discourteous service from Freedom
Scientific. Typically, if one feels compelled to call tech support, then the
matter at hand is likely of some immediate urgency. Waiting to call back
another day is rarely a feasible option.
All I will say regarding GW's tech support is that the experience speaks for
itself. You will always get a human being who will do his or her best to solve
what problems you are having. That level of continuous tech support, to my
knowledge, only exists with one or two other assistive tech providers
throughout the industry. Sadly, rude, slow, or nonexistent customer support is
turning out to be the rule; GW Micro is thankfully the exception.
Regards,
Steve
On 7/1/2009 3:22 PM, Sky Taylor wrote:
Well, Chip, I am able to get the support from Freedom Scientific, as they
seem to like me as a friend, so they give me the support. I have had tuns of
support from them. For example, when I bought a vista computer, I was able to
get Jaws running on it fine. One of the things I would try doing before trying
anything else, is that I would try again at another day to get the support. For
example, I am having a problem with my PacMate where my wireless card isn't
working on it, so we need to phone Freedom Scientific support to get the
problem solved to get it working.
----- Original Message -----
From: Chip Orange
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:34 AM
Subject: RE: we vs jfw
Hi Dennis,
I switched from jaws, after about 10 years, to WE, about a year ago.
It's fine if you really want to contact me privately to discuss this, but
I'd suggest a public discussion is much better. others could correct or
disagree with any points I would make, and they could add to anything I may
have forgotten. I think you'll get better info this way, and if there are
those who wish to say anything negative, and they don't wish to say it on list,
they can still contact you privately.
I switched because I found the FS customer service to be completely
unresponsive; and this was a condition which continued over many instances
spanning many years.
I also switched when I first read of the GW plans for scripting. I could
see immediately what a *huge* benefit such a scripting system would be towards
allowing many more programs to become accessible.
Not only is the GW scripting tool a fantastic tool for making an
application accessible, it's also a tool (if you'll forgive the pun) which is
accessible to the masses. so, if you and a few others are using a program
that's not used by millions, and it has some accessibility problems, it's very
likely one of you could write and publish a script to correct these problems.
no more begging the screen reader vendor to fix this program in the next
release, and being told by them that it's just not used by enough of their
customers to be worth the time of the vendor. it's now in the hands of the
users themselves. this is tremendously empowering!
Yes, you could say jaws has the same scripting capability; but, I tried
for years to work with jaws scripts, and found the entire process
excruciatingly difficult, and poorly documented and/or supported.
And to prove my point, there has been an explosion of WE scripts since
the capability became available; I'd say more than all jaws scripts ever
published.
How has my own experience been as a WE user verses being a jaws user?
Well, I have a paid up copy of jaws with 2 SMAs, and I haven't used it in
about a year. that's the telling point I think.
I find the support to be much more responsive. are they always right?
if WE always the better screen reader for a given program? well, no on both
points. But, GW cares about being right (helping you solve your problem), and
they care about making their product better. I think they'd like to make some
money along the way too.
In my opinion FS cares about making money; if they make their product
better along the way, how nice for you! but it's not their motivation. You
can see the difference in the last (largely bug-fix) release of WE, which was
free, while pretty much every release of jaws has been a paid upgrade, no
matter how little new functionality was introduced.
I'm sure you could get down to the level of arguing which reader was the
better reader application by application; but seldom is this what decides
anyone. most of us have to use a wide range of applications, so that kind of
comparison is rarely helpful I think.
Finally, for those who aren't lucky enough to have someone purchase your
reader for you, GW offers a choice of purchasing plans involving a series of
small payments. Last time I checked, FS had nothing like it; you simply had to
come up with all the money up front. if you aren't sure about switching to WE,
then why not rent it for a month? shouldn't cost you too much to try it that
way.
ok, I guess I've hit the high points for me as to why I switched; let me
know if you have any questions.
hth,
Chip
------------------------------
Chip Orange
Database Administrator
Florida Public Service Commission
[email protected]
(850) 413-6314
(Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: dennis [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:48 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: we vs jfw
could people who used both contac me? strongly thinkin of going to we
want to know advantages and dis advantages of both
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