Re: in the market for a new laptop:suggetsions?

  • From: "Paul Hunt" <huntp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 17:04:57 -0000

Hi,
Yeah I couldn't get my copy of XP Home installed on either of the two HP machines because the drivers simply didn't seem to exist for them. I've just bought a new HP Compaq laptop from their business class of notebooks because they are the only machines they've got that support "downgrading". I intend to install my copy of XP Home on it (because the downgrade is to XP Pro and I don't have a JAWS license for Pro).
Some of the HP Compaqs have a serial port although the one I'm getting doesn't. I have a USB to serial adapter to get round this though. 

Paul
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Stockton" <nstockton@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: in the market for a new laptop:suggetsions?
The problem with hp is that they don't provide XP drivers on their site so you have to look up the drivers for each piece of hardware separately on google. I helped my uncle downgrade (I consider it an upgrade) to XP an hp computer earlier this year. After searching and searching and searching I was able to find all the needed drivers to get speech up and running on the computer. I was never able to find the PCI drivers for the computer how ever and so when he got a PCI modem to install in it, he had to take it back to the store and exchange it for a USB modem. I'd recommend Dell's latitude series of business laptops myself specially if your like me and either have or think you might have at some point a device that requires a real serial port and not a USB port. The latitude series of laptops are the only series of laptops that still offer a serial port, making it the default choice for hardware engineers or the blind who might still need one. Apart from the latitude series is also Linux compatible and there are loads of howtos online for setting up linux on different latitude models. I myself have my dell latitude d600 setup with a dual boot system of XP-pro and debian gnu/linux. 

Nick Stockton
----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Hunt" <huntp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 9:45 AM
Subject: Re: in the market for a new laptop:suggetsions?



Hi,
If I were you my main concern would be finding a laptop downgradable to XP. I doubt you'll find one these days that comes with it pre-installed though - Vista is ubiquitous now and it's a right pain in the ass.
I've bought two new machines in the past 12 months - an HP laptop and an HP desktop and they both came with Vista Home Premium and the quality of JAWS's support for it is well below that of XP. Even simple tasks like reading back and forth through text files (regardless of the editor being used) causes problems such as the previous line being read instead of the next one when you down-arrow and then repeated "blank" being spoken when you arrow back upwards until you refresh the screen. Also the command prompt isn't read properly under Vista - as soon as the window starts to scroll JAWS starts reading random lines from the window under the command prompt! It doesn't read some of the dialogues in VS 2005 that it does under XP either. These are just a few examples.
I've just bought a new laptop and my main priority was making sure it supported XP.
AMD processors are just as good as Intel ones and they generally have slower clock speeds but are more efficient so compare favorably with Intel chips that are clocked quicker. 

Paul
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tyler Littlefield" <tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 2:35 PM
Subject: Re: in the market for a new laptop:suggetsions?



that answers a lot.
I've seen amd processors out there, and hear they're really good; their speed calculations look different from pentium though. How is that measured? 

Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
email: tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
web: tysdomain-com
Visit for quality software and web design.
skype: st8amnd2005
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nimer" <nimerjaber1@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 7:26 AM
Subject: Re: in the market for a new laptop:suggetsions?



Hello,
your operating system is not a trial!!!!! If you want XP, you're going to have to request it from the manufacturers. I would go for a 64-bit machine with a 32-bit OS personally. At least 2 gigs of ram, but I would up it. As big a hard drive you can get, at least a core 2 duo or an AMD x2 processor, at least 256 MB video card dedicated memory. 

Thanks
Nimer J

Nimer M. Jaber
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Tyler Littlefield wrote:

Hello list,
I'm in the market for a new laptop.
My max price range is about 1100. I'm not totally sure what I need; of course I'm looking for the best deal, but I also need something that Jaws will work on. From what I've heard, jaws does not work on 64-bit vista; are there still laptops shipped with 32 bit, or even better XP? I know a lot of the computer companies started sending everything with vista. I've also seen things like 60 day trials and etc on vista; am I going to have to purchase a full copy after I get the laptop? 

Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
email: tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
web: tysdomain-com
Visit for quality software and web design.
skype: st8amnd2005

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