Hello Neil, Disagreeing and discussing this topic is of course good and stimulating. I don't own multi-national businesses with thousands of employees, but I do own a retail business with 4 or 5 employees and maybe I could make a Mac work for me if I really wanted. I am on my computer all day long both for work and for play/recreation/keeping in touch with friends and family and having been a Jaws user since 1989 to me it's maybe all about what I feel comfortable with and about muscle memory. It is of course also about the applications I use, my point of sale solution is Microsoft Retail Management Solution which is one of their Dynamics products, I am using Sage Simply Accounting which as of this upcoming version is being renamed to Sage 50 as my accounting program and I do all my bookkeeping, payroll, tax filing etc. Then of course there is Outlook which I use as my mail client along with my Office 365 subscription which gives me full hosted exchange. We also scan and electronically file all invoices and most paperwork for which I use Nuance Paperport and I use Excel every day as I get many order forms from companies in Excel format. Lastly I do of course use the Internet extensively. I realize the Apple also has a point of sale solution for retailers, I am sure there are probably accounting packages out there although here in Canada Sage Simply Accounting is very widely used because it has all the tax tables for calculating the payroll deductions (Employment Insurance, Canada Pension Plan and Federal Income tax) which I have to submit to the government each month and I am not aware that they have a Mac version. Anyhow, as I said, I'm sure it's all doable, but at this point I am not doing it.
I went into an Apple Store last year and spend about an hour playing around with Voiceover and while this of course is not nearly enough, one thing I found very difficult is the fact that often you have to press so many keys together. I became blint when I was 16 and built a pipe bomb which exploded when I was holding it in my hands and I had extremely bad hand injuries. As a result I only have 3 fingers on each hand, I lost both the index and middle finger on each hand and I found it very difficult to press some of these key combinations. Maybe there are work-arounds for that as well, I assume you must be able to assign different key combinations as you can in Jaws and of course Voiceover has come a long way in the last few years. As for the cost, well, to me giving $200 to Freedom Scientific every 2 years to maintain my SMA really is not a big deal. I don't think they can get enough revenue out of selling new licences to pay their people as they are a small company with a limited number of products. I find Windows 7 with Jaws 13 and now 14 to be very stabil and the days when you have to wait months until a new OS is supported are over as well. The final release of Jaws 14 was released a couple of days ago and Windows 8 officially starts shipping I think this Friday or next Monday, so the timing is perfect and Windows 8 is fully supported from day 1. I am at this point not even going to worry about whether I can or cannot use a Windows 8 tablet. I am very interested to see whether a true Windows 8 tablet like the Surface and by that I mean an Intel based tablet not one with Windows RT will be able to run Jaws and I guess we will find out soon enough. But the iPad of course dominates the tablet market and another thing I can't wait to see is when Office will be available for the iPad, from what I hear from the sources I follow this could happen as early as Q1 2013 and then of course it will be interesting to see whether it is accessible with Voiceover. OK, now I really do have to sleep, let's continue to disagree another day *smile* All the best, Sieghard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
