Hello all, In my continued search for a really great Windows 8 Tablet PC, I got the MS Surface Pro. With it, I purchased the $130 keyboard that Microsoft sells with it as an upgrade. I must say, I had very high hopes for this device and to be honest, the Surface itself is excellent. Great battery life, even though it is a bit slow to charge. Very quick, especially the boot up which is about 10 to 15 seconds max. It has a 128 Solid State Drive and I got a 64 Gig micro card to plug in the side. The speakers are not great but I have a jam box and it paired up very nicely. JAWS installs and runs without any issues. I have JAWS 14 release and I'm also doing testing hear at the office with JAWS 15 of course, which I'll be showing at the summer conventions and we'll get released to Public Beta about September 1st.
So you might ask, what is the problem... The Keyboard is terrible for a keyboard user, especially one trying to drive a screen reader. For just typing a document, it is very nice. Good feel to the keys for a thin add-on keyboard cover and the spacing is very nice, but it ends there. I find 4 issues that will force me to return this setup to Amazon. 1. The FN key is two keys to the right of the spacebar rather than on the left side. 2. The Function Keys F1 - F12 all require the FN key and there is no way to switch it so the F1 - F12 could work without the FN key. 3. There is no Insert Key so you must use Laptop Layout with CapsLock as the JAWS key, which would be OK if the FN key was on the left side also I guess. Just to get a Links List requires great coordination using CapsLock + FN + F7. 4. Finally, the Space Bar is extended left, half way across the X key on the keyboard. My other laptop keyboards have always ended the spacebar at the C and then an ALT key so my thumb just drops onto the ALT nicely when needed. With this one, I'm pressing SpaceBar all the time. Now granted, if number 4 was the only issue, I would adjust but the first 3, make it impossible for me to consider and I decided to write this because lots of people are considering looking at these new devices and before you plunk down $1000 to $1200 on one of these, I figured this could be helpful in avoiding a mistake. Again, I had such high hopes for this MS Surface. But I have not given up my search either. I'll find something yet. BTW, I still am using the Toshiba Protégé 835 UltraBook I bought last year and love it. But it doesn't have a touch screen and people want to see that working this year so I'm continuing my search. Regards, Eric Eric Damery Vice President Software Product Management Freedom Scientific 11800 31st Court North St. Petersburg, FL 33716 727-299-6110 For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
