Hi Jessi, I'm going to use dp: to mark my responses inline with parts of your message below:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jessi R" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 2:12 PM Subject: a newbie with questions! does the mac have plug and play, like windows or would I have to install a bunch of drivers for my printer/scanner etc? dp: I've not found a piece of hardware yet that requires drivers that are not already readily available on the Mac. I would say though that if drivers are required, they are provided with the hardware. text edit...is it a fully functional word processor with a good spell checker, all the attributes you can add to your text in ms-word, etc? is there a way to tell with voiceover whether text is single/double spaced, the font, where the indents are, all that important stuff? I'm a creative writing/journalism major in college, so having a good, fully functional word processor is very very important to me. dp: you will want to get an 3rd party document shredder do do some of the fancy stuff but I don't know how good voiceove support is for all that you need to do. I heard that voiceover also worked with open office, which apparently is a freeware wannabe office suite...is that true? dp: it's not a wannabe at all. VO does not work with it though. would there be a way for me to save files as .doc or .rtf or something that other people could open on their pc's? dp: windows will read text edit files because they are either .txt, html, xml or rtf and I guess you can save them as doc too. I heard it's possible to load windows onto the mac and then switch between the two operating systems...is that hard to do? I thought I might do that and kinda use both until I got to know voiceover really well. dp: bootcamp which allows you to partition your hd and run windows as a dedicated bootstrap is free and comes with your new Mac. It's better cecause you have a 100% windows compatible system which you do not with any vmware. for your purposes at least initially, this might be a better way to go. is there an accessible OCR program, like open book or k1000, for the mac? dp: we are getting along just fine with off the shelf OCR packages. I think that's all I have for now, but I'm sure I'll be back with more, lol. peace and positivity:) dp: pleae look at the archives of this list and http://www.icanworkthisthing.com and you'll find a wealth of information. There are other places too like: http://www.screenlessswitchers.com which has podcasts discussing moving from windows to the Mac which will be helpful. The new getting started manual will be helpful as well but the best thing is exploration. Jessi with guide dog Goldina I am only one but I am one, I can't do everything but I can do something, the something I can do, I must do, and by the grace of God, I will! count it all joy, no matter what!
