Hi all I can only sum this up in two words – Absolutely Unbelievable!
Rarely, if ever, have I encountered the kind of responsiveness that I am seeing right now inside of a virtual machine running under VMWare Fusion 6.0 Professional on a MMacBook Air with an I5 quad core 2.4 GHZ processor and just 4GB of RAM. I’m probably going to upgrade this to an 8GB machine shortly. But I believe that the SSD makes some difference here. But that’s getting off the point somewhat. NVDA is quite responsive. I cannot evaluate Window-Eyes, since my version won’t allow me to install it under Windows 8.1. I’m not prepared to pay GW Micro for the privilege of being allowed to run their software. But again, I am straying somewhat off the point. Jaws version 15.09.22 or something, latest version anyway, is just so down right responsive it’s unbelievable. In fact, I don’t ever remember seeing a Windows-based system which was as responsive as that which I’m seeing right now under this VM, (properly configured). Everything I’m doing with Jaws is just there … under the fingertips in Braille and verbalised via synthetic speech. Currently I’m using the Vocaliser voices for Jaws, as I hate that darn Eloquance torture. I actually have a license for the NVDA vocaliser but I’m not sure how it should be implemented as it came as a .ini file which just opens in NoteTab when I double-click it of course. But again, I’m getting off the point. The only screen-reader I’ve seen which rivals what I’m seeing now under this virtual machine is VoiceOver under OS X. In fact, I have the two of them running at once doing their respective jobs. They seem to get along just fine, with little interaction between the two. But anyway, I must express my amazement yet again. I actually took just one machine to work today, my Mac. I had OpenBook 9 and Jaws running in Windows, and the usual Mac stuff. Not a single glitch did I encounter all day, including the scanning and OCR of multiple pages from a book under OpenBook. So essentially, I had three speech and Braille systems all working together. I used my little Mini Seika Braille display on OS X. I used a BrailleNote Apex under Windows with Jaws and I used a Focus40-Blue under OpenBook 9, all at the same time and all perfectly seamlessly. Quite, quite astonishing and I have to say a hearty well done here to Freedom Scientific. They’ve really cleaned up their act over the last few years, and I’m very very impressed indeed with Jaws 15. I particularly like the touch cursor implementation. I’ve never been much of a fan of screen-readers which radically change the behaviour of touch cursors or touch screen applications. But Freedom have thought this one out excellently well. Those amongst the group who have known me for a long time will know that I’ve always been a critic of Freedom. But they will, if they truly know me, also attest that I am more than willing to embrace tolerance and change. And my goodness, how Jaws has changed. If the rumours of a total rewrite for Window-Eyes 9.0 are true, and I’m pretty sure that they are, GW Micro has a hard act to follow. That’s probably why they’ve jumped into bed with Microsoft in order to distribute Window-Eyes 8.4 free of charge to Office and Windows users. This bring me to another point. I have Microsoft Office 2013 installed here. What would Windows users advise as a Mail client? I’ve ruled out Windows Mail because it keeps nagging me to convert my user account to a Microsoft account, something which I do not wish to do. I do have, but have not as yet installed, Thunderbird. I’m not sure whether that is gooder or badder than Outlook 2013. Then again, there may be an even more gooder client out there for all I know. If you know more than me, prey, do tell all. Kindest regards <--- Gordon Smith ---> <[email protected]> Information Technology Accessibility Consultant; Proudly Providing Braille And Alternative Format Transcription Services, Plus I.T Help & Support To The Staff And Students Of the Visually Impaired Department at: Sunnyside Academy Manorfarm Way Colby Newham Middlesbrough Cleveland ============================== Telephone: United Kingdom: Free Phone: 0800 8620538 United Kingdom Geographic: 01133 280547 Mobile: +44 7907 823971 Europe and other non-specified: +44 1642 688095 United States Of America And Canada: +1 646 9151493 Or: +1 209 436 9443 Australasia: +61 38 8205930 Or: +61 39 0284505 Fax: +44 1642 365123 Follow Us On Twitter: <http://twitter.com/maciosaccess> Skype: <skype:mac-access-dot-net?call> ------------------------------ ======================================= To post to this group, please send your message to: [email protected] The Windows-Access E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit your personalise subscriber options page, located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/windows-access You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Windows-Access forum at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/windows-access/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. 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