Replying here to C O's post, but will, er, chip in with my 2 pence worth being in the UK.
Firstly, someone, from the UK as it happened, commented on this very list some while ago he thought blind people were always likely to be served better by companies like GW who while "incorporated" of course aren't corporations like some competitors who's first elegence is to their share hoders, not blind customers, who in any case are often not the (paying) customer. I believe there's a lot of truth in that and GW has proved over the years that you don't need the mega bucks of a corporate to do real inovation; witness GW's thought and hard work in implementing it's version of scripting, not to mention the great work they've done with other companies including Apple and Adobe. NO, not all access problems can be tackled by scripty work arounds that traditionally have foundered on the rocks of continual inovation and change in the way software is written. My second point is around copy protection or activation. We are lucky in the UK too not having to cope with this additional hassel as we are blessed with unprotected copies of W-E. At the same time I have to wonder if GW is doing itself any favours here. The problems with the competitions scheme of doing this is well known enough for me not to comment further, but another big player, Dolphin systems, do implement activation these days and seem to have given their customers relatively little grief on that front at least. Think they work with the notion of the ""screwdriver test" whereby only modifications involving opening up the computer and changing components trigger a re-activation. No one would welcome GW bringing on protection, but I wonder how much money they're losing by not having a scheme similar to this? It isn't just mean minded vi individuals who are intent on ripping off assistive tech providers either. Years ago one of the biggest charities here was found running dozens of copies of a screen readerwithout owning multiple licences. Wil say no more. Yes, GW support is good, and while not perfect is some way ahead of most of the competition. Add to that too the defered payments or renting scheme, another inovation which connects GW very directly with it's end users, and you really do get to understand the difference between a small company and a mega buck corporation. Ray Chip Orange wrote: Hi Sky, ok, I hear you; could it be that you're dealing with people that are different from those who support jaws? perhaps that makes a big difference. my other problem is that often I had problems on my home pc, when I could call only on evenings and weekends, and of course they're closed then. I tried email support, and repeated I would get no answer for a week or more, and then when it came it would ask me if I had tried rebooting, or some such useless reply. I'd answer yes, and wait another week. when I talked to the head of support for jaws, he said that I should only call, as the people who did email support weren't his best! that was his only solution; he wasn't going to change anything. I also forgot to mention something that was another big reason why I changed: copy protection (WE does not have it for U.S. customers!). It caused me endless grief with my vista system, since it was tied to a hardware signature of the pc, and each time I turned on my wifi or turned it off, or turned on my bluetooth or turned it off, and so on, it changed the hardware signature, and the copy protection kicked in and said I was in demo mode. I found the entire copy protection arrangement unnecessarily frustrating, and I appreciate the trust GW shows in us by not making us go through it. 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: Sky Taylor [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:22 PM To: Chip Orange Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: we vs jfw 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] 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 If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. 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