Category: Geeks r Us
Hi to all you wonderful computer geeks, Have a question. I'll be purchasing a new computer soon, but is it worth doing so and getting XP or just waiting and getting Vista? thing is obviously I am aware that jaws is working hard with them but am not sure how much longer they will have vista working properly.
thanks,
Well, software and hardware are tw different things here. The important thing, I think is that you ask for a computer whose hardware is Vista ready. They already have machines out that meet the vista minimum specifications. Then once Vista comes out you can install it (even if it will be a bit of a pain). Thing is that it'll take Microsoft until January or February of 2007 to get it out the door and then I'd expect another 2 to 3 months for the screen reading companies to catch up. I've heard though that Vista is truly awesome, accessibility wise, because finally they are separating the representation layer from the actual information layer, meaning that the screen reading software can get information in the same way the display drivers can, rather than having to hook into the display drivers and "steal" info from them. I have not read about the details but they are promising a truly revolutionary accessibility improvement so I am excited to see if they follow up.
So, you see, you might have to wait 7 or 8 months until a Vista loaded computer that can run Jaws comes on the market but you can get the Vista compatible software right now, and that's what I recommend. XP is fine and I like it a lot, no need to upgrade right away to be honest. I'd jump on the Vista band wagon by next fall, when the bugs have been tested and the software is up to speed.
cheers
-B
Agreed, I'm waiting on Vista until stuff no longer runs on windows 2000, and others have used it a lot to know if it's really that good and just how much of an invasion of privacy it is.
I am staying with xp and plan to stay with it as long as I can. As the old saying goes if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Troy
Get a mac!!!! Ooops! did I say that? Sory.... Naaa,I'm not...really get a Mac.
Willy *sigh* could you ever possibly say anything remotely constructive on a Windows discussion? It's becoming sort of a bit like the computer equivalent of the southern babtists or the mormones walking from house to house telling you to join their cult. VoiceOver is absolutely horrendous in my experience, so far, and I see absolutely no insentive for moving to Macs whatsoever, unless you enjoy paying twice as much for the hardware, of course, which you, may be, do.
I will give them thumbs up for the MacBook, nice hardware and the first Mac to be reasonably and basically almost fairly priced, but apart from that I can't say I've been impressed with Mac computers at all.
For one thing their free voices on the VoiceOver are absolutely horrendous. With Vista Ms promises to rival, ifnot vastly surpass, Macs for accessibility to the information presented by the OS, I think Ipods are the neatest thing but on the desktop market I really don't see much of a future for Macs at the moment.
That's just my point though. Don't take this the wrong way but when the only thing people can post to computer discussion is "get a Mac" as if that solves all your needs, you can do away with women, toaster ovens, smoke detectors and umbrellas, if only you got a mac, it just sounds a little redundant.
Actually, let me rephrase, since this seemed too much of a personal attack, which was not the intention.
It just seems weird to me that people with Macs just keep saying "get a Mac" without explaining why or what good comes of it and what you get for the extra price.
Let us assume a user wants to:
surf the net,
check email,
download music and movies (bit torrent/other clients, yes it's illegal and I am not encouraging it but let us assume said user wants to do that),
chat online with msn, yahoo and AIM,
use Word, Excel, Power point for daily office type needs,
play accessible games (text games for instance),
write and record music (Cakewalk).
What software is there on Macs for these things and has it been tested and found to be accessible.
If so, we might be talking slightly different ball game, since Jaws is not exactly cheap.
Looking forward to hear those Mac responses.
cheers
-B
Lol so getting a mack will solve all my "men" issues? if so, bring it on! :) haha!
Actually, getting a mac has been known to solve all the problems of life, the universe and everythinkg. wildwbrew have no fear kind sir and I do humbly appologize if it seems like I believe mac's are the solution to everythinkg. I wish they were and Most of the time when I say that I am simply sharing my frustration on how fradual windows is getting and how difficult it is sometimes to keep it running. I work as an adaptive tech instructor and do lots of tech support in the homes and businesses of client's. Lately I have found that making simple changes such as uninstalling a piece of software or perhaps installing ssoftware yields some odd behaivior in Windows that I have to try to diagnose. Example, I just set up a Brand New Dell and it was running fine. When the machine booted up a program came up first that I didn't want. I uninstalled it and when restarting the machine all of a suddden Jaws focus was brought to some other piece of software. Since the client was from the commision for the blind I decided rather then uninstall any more of the useless demo softwaer that Dell includes I would declair the machine running and stop there. I did tell the client they could uninstall anythinkg they wanted but to comply with the referral this was all I could do. Dell puts so much rediculous demo software on there machines and we all know how lovely the Windows uninstall process works right! not... Bits and pieces of the software are still left on the machine both in folders on the hard drive and more importantly in the registry which can really slow a machine down after a while.
Also, the rediculous amount of software required to make a windows machine slows the thing down so much that it takes forever to get anything done.Mac's just don't have this problem. you dump it in the trash and it's gone and doesn't cause adverse effects to the machine. Also apple gives you real software that really works. Now, to address the access issue I will simply say remember this is the first addition of voiceover. right now you can send e-mail, surf the net(the zone works excellently Qns reading board, sending PMS and the ventrillo chat is just perfect.), write documents although with alternitave software then office, read word documents, burn cd's, use all of the messenging services via one client and the list gos on and on. I am just very frustrated, anoyed and extremely unhappy with windows and look forward to the Mac alternitave. I also believe that you will see some excellent thinkgs happening with access when Leopard comes out. I do thank you for sharing your thoughts. Have an excellent afternoon...
So. Basically, Office is inaccessible or can't be used with a Mac? You have to use another program. No, not for me.
Mr Woof, your point is duely noted and I do agree with the disadvantages of stupid demo software. I had to spend an hour uninstalling an unwanted anti-virus software demo before I could use my pc. That's the best reason one has to have a pc custom built, no unnecessary comercial software. The frustrations I've seen with Mac though have to do with the abstraction of file manipulation that they do, for user convenience surely. You can't access and work with the file system directly, they prefer you go through iTunes, iPhoto etc rather than temper with the files themselves. We just lost a bunch of pictures because my fiance used Finder to ove files she thought were copies of pictures but somehow the pictures themselves got removed. I'm not sure exactly what happened but, basically, in windows you see if it's a jpg file, you copy it and you're done, you can even go into dos and execute the dos commands for moving all .jpg files from folder a to b. I like being that involved with the manipulation of the actual files. May be this is possible on a Mac too but we had a heck of a time trying to recover the pictures and it was a bit frustrating. I understand why they do it, to simplify the user experience, but if you are advanced enough user you don't want to be shielded from the way the files are stored and organized on the computer.
Now that sounds simply ugly and if this is true I would certainly agree with you. I haven't delt with pictures just documents so don't know. Thanks for the info I'll have to keep an eye out to see if I run in to that problem.