Merry Christmas!
I am relatively new to the group, although I have been here before.
I have been fascinated by all the comments concerning Chris's reasons
for leaving and the discussions that followed.
Freedom Scientific (FS) are a business and ultimately just want to make
money. Who can blame them for that?
The latest upgrades to Jaws have been very minimal and that issue needs
addressing. Perhaps we need to see what other companies charge for
software upgrades and evaluate if they are any better in quality than ours?
Whether we own one computer or 20 is irrelevant. Accessibility must for
me be the issue. Surely how fortunate one is or isn't should not come in
to it. As a business they must try to market their product and as
consumers we can choose to ignore them.
The point I want to raise is this.
If Microsoft, Apple, the Mac and so on are willing to embrace speech
software, should we not be glad of that? After all they have far more
money than FS, so with our help, they can improve awareness of our
difficulties and user accessibility.
It is a great list and if enough people feel that FS are no longer
fulfilling their promise to us we should arrange some kind of
petition/letter/discussion or whatever to alert them to our concerns.
Interested to see what you all think.
Cheers.
Ron
-----Original Message-----
From: jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robin Clayden
Sent: 21 December 2010 19:49
To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: Why I am not going to use JAWS
Hi,
I have been one of the fortunate ones who has had Jaws paid for by my
employers since I first got it through the Access to Work scheme around
the mid nineties, think I started with version 3.0. They also allowed me
to install it on my home pc as I did stuff from home occasionally
through accessing the work server remotely.
They paid my SMA there in July, knowing I was taking an early retirement
option at Christmas and have now agreed to pass ownership and
responsibility of future SMA's to me - they've been brilliant.
However, had I been a private individual and paying all my JFW upgrades
and SMA's etc, I really don't think I would be on this list at this
time, I think I would have been looking hard at cheaper and fairer
products and related T's and C's.
I found the Microsoft comment very interesting earlier, should they take
up the possibilities of including optional screen reading capabilities
in their next phase of operating systems, or even looking at what Google
are doing now, almost challenging Microsoft with a rival platform.....
maybe in a couple of years when my JFW expenses come home to roost with
me..... all this debate could be irrelevant?
One observation I'd like to throw out, and I am no expert, is that in
the last five years or so, I really felt that the enhancements to JFW
have not justified the hipe in price or the utilisation of an upgrade
from your SMA.
Perhaps an SMA should have a time factor instead of a version factor
would be more realistic. Purchase an SMA and it lasts for 5 years, or
purchase the product with a lifetime upgrade policy..... think I might
need to put my tin hat on now!
Version 5.1 was a great stable build, 7.1 also, but since then, I really
don't feel that the newer versions released had any really significant
improvements to it's predecessor to warrant the cost of the improvement
Sorry for the long rant, Seasons Greetings to all by the way.
Robin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Sears" <r.sears1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 7:01 PM
Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: Why I am not going to use JAWS
I quite agree, I have been using System Access for many years in fact I
bought
the whole package so I pay each year. You don't have to pay for updates
and it
is so easy to use. I don't like the voices in NVDA but I must admit I
haven't
tried it yet. JFW 10 will suit me so I won't be upgrading it any more. I
daresay that most Jaws users are having it paid by their companies in the
work
place and mostly in the States.
Cheers
Ron
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Misch" <bmisch2002@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 5:57 PM
Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: Why I am not going to use JAWS
actually system access does what you need buy it once and never pay for
sma's
ever again and it uses pretty much all of the jaws keys since the layout
is
based on jaws.
On Dec 21, 2010, at 11:28 AM, Kevin Morris wrote:
> I've been using Jaws for about 14 years now and find it very good.
> Having said that, I'm familiar with it and it may well be that if I
> tried NVDA or other similar software I'd be converted.
>
> It does appear that Jaws is overpriced (it would be great if you just
> paid, once for it and you got all subsequent upgrades free without the
> need for SMAs etc).
>
> I'm not going to ditch it yet but would certainly welcome an expansion
> of choice and, as Graham mentions the incorporation of screen reading
> software into all PCs would be a very welcome development.
>
> Kevin
>
> On 21/12/2010, Graham Page <gpage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> JAWS for Windows is becoming an increasingly large download and I do
>> find
>> myself wondering if it is not time that JAWS had a rewrite, dropping
>> more of
>> the legacy support. It is wholly reasonable for example for JAWS not
>> to
>> support anything older than Windows XP which has now been around for
>> over 9
>> years. As many people have said though, there is now little if any
>> justification for the differences between JAWS standard and JAWS
>> Professional and JAWS Pro should in my opinion be dropped and JAWS
>> should be
>> sold at the same price as the standard virsion, working with all
>> operating
>> systems. In the longer term however, the PC should go the same way as
>> the
>> Mac with a screenreader included as standard that really works. Only
>> when
>> we reach this stage can we even begin to talk about equal access to
>> computers. Some vendors and manufacturers would go out of business but
>> that is just tough luck. This may be eutopia rather than a realistic
>> possibility but lets just say that if Microsoft were to purchase one of
>> the
>> existing screenreaders and employ an appropriate amount of development
>> staff
>> so the screenreader could be shipped with windows it would make things
>> very
>> interesting indeed. JAWS would be an obvious target as it probably
>> still
>> has the largest user base.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Graham
>>
>> Graham Page
>> Mobile: 07753 607980
>> Fax: 0870 706 2773
>> Email: gpage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> MSN: gabriel_mcbird@xxxxxxxxxxx
>> Skype: gabriel_mcbird
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>> On
>> Behalf Of chris hallsworth
>> Sent: 21 December 2010 12:19
>> To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [jaws-uk] Why I am not going to use JAWS
>>
>> Hello all.
>> I will publicly state why I am refusing to use JAWS. It is Freedom
>> Scientific's attitude towards pricing and their license schemes. Some of
>> us can't or won't afford to buy JAWS, especially if the free one is just
>> as good as JAWS. As for the license scheme, the user is punished to
>> license JAWS on up to three machines. With the free and even other
>> commercial screen readers one can install on as many computers as they
>> have so long as one machine is used at a time, no questions asked. With
>> JAWS, once all three authorizations have been used they would then have
>> to request FS for more keys. Eventually and I will say eventually they
>> will refuse flat and get paranoid about people sharing authorization
>> keys. I understand piracy and all that and I certainly don't commit to
>> any of that stuff however at the same time FS is just asking for money
>> and not caring about the customer. True there is a dongle option, but
>> even they can have their fair share of problems. Now for the technical,
>> I do find the free one to be actually more stable and even works with
>> more applications than JAWS. You may find this shocking but this is true
>> according to my personal experience.
>> On a positive note, I would like to publicly thank the guys at Sight and
>> Sound. They have been really helpful in answering my JAWS queries, even
>> though the suggestions may not be what I was looking for. It's better to
>> have good communication rather than nothing at all. So thanks, and keep
>> up the great works.
>> Take care.
>> --
>>
>> Chris Hallsworth
>> You can contact me at the following channels:
>> E-mail and Facebook: challsworth2@xxxxxxx
>> MSN: ch9675@xxxxxxxxxxx
>> Skype: chrishallsworth7266
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/christopherh40
>>
>>
>> ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
>> ** [mailto:jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
>> ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
>> ** jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
_mailto:jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq_[est@freelists.org?subject=unsubscribe
<mailto:jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe>]
>> ** If this link
doesn't_mailto:jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribemailto:jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faqmailto:jaws-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe_
Merry Christmas!
I am relatively new to the group, although I have been here before.
I have been fascinated by all the comments concerning Chris's reasons
for leaving and the discussions that followed.
Freedom Scientific (FS) are a business and ultimately just want to make
money. Who can blame them for that?
The latest upgrades to Jaws have been very minimal and that issue needs
addressing. Perhaps we need to see what other companies charge for
software upgrades and evaluate if they are any better in quality than ours?
Whether we own one computer or 20 is irrelevant. Accessibility must for
me be the issue. Surely how fortunate one is or isn't should not come in
to it. As a business they should try to sell their product and as
consumers we can choose to ignore them.
The point I want to raise is this.
If Microsoft, Apple, the Mac and so on are willing to embrace speech
software, should we not be glad of that? After all they have far more
money than FS, so with our help, they can improve user accessibility.
It is a great list and if enough people feel that FS are no longer
fulfilling their promise to us we should arrange some kind of
petition/letter/discussion or whatever.
Interested to see what you all think.
Cheers.
Ron
