Sky,
That's great, but most of us who have switched to GW Micro's product
line have received less than helpful and/or discourteous service from
Freedom Scientific. Typically, if one feels compelled to call tech
support, then the matter at hand is likely of some immediate urgency.
Waiting to call back another day is rarely a feasible option.
All I will say regarding GW's tech support is that the experience speaks
for itself. You will always get a human being who will do his or her
best to solve what problems you are having. That level of continuous
tech support, to my knowledge, only exists with one or two other
assistive tech providers throughout the industry. Sadly, rude, slow, or
nonexistent customer support is turning out to be the rule; GW Micro is
thankfully the exception.
Regards,
Steve
On 7/1/2009 3:22 PM, Sky Taylor wrote:
Well, Chip, I am able to get the support from Freedom Scientific, as
they seem to like me as a friend, so they give me the support. I have
had tuns of support from them. For example, when I bought a vista
computer, I was able to get Jaws running on it fine. One of the things
I would try doing before trying anything else, is that I would try
again at another day to get the support. For example, I am having a
problem with my PacMate where my wireless card isn't working on it, so
we need to phone Freedom Scientific support to get the problem solved
to get it working.
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Chip Orange <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:34 AM
*Subject:* RE: we vs jfw
Hi Dennis,
I switched from jaws, after about 10 years, to WE, about a year ago.
It's fine if you really want to contact me privately to discuss
this, but I'd suggest a public discussion is much better. others
could correct or disagree with any points I would make, and they
could add to anything I may have forgotten. I think you'll get
better info this way, and if there are those who wish to say
anything negative, and they don't wish to say it on list, they can
still contact you privately.
I switched because I found the FS customer service to be
completely unresponsive; and this was a condition which continued
over many instances spanning many years.
I also switched when I first read of the GW plans for scripting.
I could see immediately what a *huge* benefit such a scripting
system would be towards allowing many more programs to become
accessible.
Not only is the GW scripting tool a fantastic tool for making an
application accessible, it's also a tool (if you'll forgive the
pun) which is accessible to the masses. so, if you and a few
others are using a program that's not used by millions, and it has
some accessibility problems, it's very likely one of you could
write and publish a script to correct these problems. no more
begging the screen reader vendor to fix this program in the next
release, and being told by them that it's just not used by enough
of their customers to be worth the time of the vendor. it's now
in the hands of the users themselves. this is tremendously
empowering!
Yes, you could say jaws has the same scripting capability; but, I
tried for years to work with jaws scripts, and found the entire
process excruciatingly difficult, and poorly documented and/or
supported.
And to prove my point, there has been an explosion of WE scripts
since the capability became available; I'd say more than all jaws
scripts ever published.
How has my own experience been as a WE user verses being a jaws user?
Well, I have a paid up copy of jaws with 2 SMAs, and I haven't
used it in about a year. that's the telling point I think.
I find the support to be much more responsive. are they always
right? if WE always the better screen reader for a given
program? well, no on both points. But, GW cares about being
right (helping you solve your problem), and they care about making
their product better. I think they'd like to make some money
along the way too.
In my opinion FS cares about making money; if they make their
product better along the way, how nice for you! but it's not
their motivation. You can see the difference in the last (largely
bug-fix) release of WE, which was free, while pretty much every
release of jaws has been a paid upgrade, no matter how little new
functionality was introduced.
I'm sure you could get down to the level of arguing which reader
was the better reader application by application; but seldom is
this what decides anyone. most of us have to use a wide range of
applications, so that kind of comparison is rarely helpful I think.
Finally, for those who aren't lucky enough to have someone
purchase your reader for you, GW offers a choice of purchasing
plans involving a series of small payments. Last time I checked,
FS had nothing like it; you simply had to come up with all the
money up front. if you aren't sure about switching to WE, then
why not rent it for a month? shouldn't cost you too much to try
it that way.
ok, I guess I've hit the high points for me as to why I switched;
let me know if you have any questions.
hth,
Chip
------------------------------
Chip Orange
Database Administrator
Florida Public Service Commission
[email protected]
(850) 413-6314
(Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* dennis [mailto:[email protected]]
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:48 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* we vs jfw
could people who used both contac me? strongly thinkin of
going to we want to know advantages and dis advantages of both
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