I wonder if the $200 is actually for a JAWS upgrade or something.
Christopher Hallsworth
On 24/10/2012 10:58, Neil Barnfather - TalkNav wrote:
Sieghard,
You are correct that for accountancy purposes, even here Windows is the only
option, we too use Sage, and for that I have to use Windows via Boot Camp.
I am very interested to learn that JAWS 14 will support Windows 8 on day one,
that is interesting very much to me. You say the days of waiting for OS support
are over, sounds like they are, but, even Windows 7 took FS 6 months to
support. So this is only a change in the last 2 years.
$200 is Excellent, here in the UK our FS resellers gouge the heck out of us.
With a premium license for JAWS costing £1200 around US$1900 and with the SMA
costing £400 around US$700.
I do accept that the none pro versions of JAWS are about 2/3 of these costs
respectively.
Never the less, for none US/Canadian clients of FS, we are all screwed by our
local dealers. If Freedom Scientific could stimulate competition within the
market by opening it up, i.e. I could buy from any dealer within the world.
That would stimulate excellence in resale, promote competition and help promote
cost equality. As it is right now, I cannot buy from a US or other dealer, even
though it would save me half the money.
Playing with a Mac in a store is never a good idea from the blind point of
view, buy one and take it home, it wouldn't work for your accountancy needs,
but, you can run boot camp etc.
With Mac you can operate Voice Over in several ways, one, that gets little
press is Quick Nav, Quick Nav allows for one handed access to your Mac. The
maximum key presses are two at a time.
I once said that using a Mac was like being an octopus, owing to the amount of
keys you had to use, but that is with their traditional keyboard interface, you
can use numberpad commander, quick nav, and also track pad commander, which is
like using an iPhone etc.
Regards,
Neil Barnfather
Talks List Administrator
Twitter @neilbarnfather
TalkNav is a Nuance, Code Factory and Sendero dealer, as well as an Apple iOS,
Macintosh and Android accessibility specialist. For all your accessible phone,
PDA and GPS related enquiries visit www.talknav.com
URL: - www.talknav.com
e-mail: - [email protected]
Phone: - +44 844 999 4199
On 24 Oct 2012, at 09:28, Sieghard Weitzel <[email protected]> wrote:
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
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