I don't want to start a huge, off-topic thread here because the cost of JAWS is briefly mentioned. But, however, there is material in the text below that I thought quite informative and interesting about Freedom Sci's staff. I took this part of a message from another JAWS list I am subscribed to. Bob Smith Jane, I agree, that for some, JAWS is priced relatively high in respect to income. However, when making comparisons with the lower cost screen reader products, it is a bit fool hardy to compare on cost alone. As the old saying goes "you get what you pay for". If you think of the cost as not being for the cost of the product, but for the personnel hours taken to develop it, support it, test it and so on. Freedom Scientific unarguably have the biggest number of developers found in a screen reader company, this allows them to develop more support, in more depth and for a wider range of products than other screen reader vendors can. All right, this point depends on what you want to use your computer for. If you just want to do really limited stuff on Word, write basic emails and look at basic web sites, then JAWS is probably the wrong product for you, but if you want to do more, as most users do, then JAWS will offer you the most abilities to do what you want. As people who rely on access technology to give us the abilities to do things, then JAWS offers us the greatest amount of abilities to get the most out of our computers be it for work, academia or just for leisure purposes. So, in terms of functionality, you definately get what you pay for. The greater number of developers also allows Freedom to develop new, novel and cutting edge functionality to go into their products. JAWS was the first screen reader to support Excel, the first to offer quick navigation keys on the web, the first to support Powerpoint, to name a few of the cutting edge things Freedom have introduced into JAWS. As someone who is involved in the advanced research side of development at Freedom, then I can guarantee this isn't about to stop, there's some great things being planned. True, other companies can do this sort of thing, but it means taking developers away from what they usually do, meaning that the next version of product x won't be supported, or the functionality in say Word won't be improved. By Dan Weirich's own admission, the WE support for Word and other Office products was very bad until recently. and Word is somewhere where JAWS has been strong for a long time. I can understand your point about the high cost, but would encourage everyone making comparisons not only to look at cost, but to look at the functionality as well. No two screen readers are alike, except in the product category. It's a bit like comparing Windows to Linux, both are operating systems, butboth are completely different. When deciding upon a screen reader, it's like any other piece of software, or any other products. You have to decide what you need from that product, how much value to you put on having to have those abilites, and make a decision on which screen reader product is right for you. Oh yes, a lot of staff at Freedom are blind as well. Chris Hofstader, Vice President of Software Engineering is blind, James Datray, lead scripter is blind, as are many others, and oh yes, Ted Henter, who created JAWS for DOS, and Glen Gordon, the Cheif Technical Officer, who created JAWS for Windows, they're blind too. Will -- To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx