RE: JAWS on a thumb drive
- From: "Blackwell, Clifford" <CBlackwell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 09:47:44 -0600
You could also buy a 2 to 1 usb hub/splitter and use only a single usb
port with the dongle and the thumbdrive version of Jaws.
________________________________
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Brian Giles
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 9:34 PM
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: JAWS on a thumb drive
Hi Kirstin,
There has been a USB version of JAWS since JAWS 7. However, it wasn't
until 9 had been out for a while that they started updating the thumb
drive version along with the desktop versions.
Unlike the dolphin pen or the sam key formerly the key to freedom, JAWS
on a USB drive does not cost any extra. There is a caviot, though, and
that is that you can only run it as a 40 minute demo on computers that
do not already have JAWS on them. If the computer already has a copy of
JAWS or gets its authorization from a network, than you can run JAWS off
your USB drive as long as you need to. I found this to be great in a
class I took once, and I didn't have to mess with changing settings that
someone using the computer might've changed. However, when I went to the
computer lab in the building later, those computers have the USB ports
disabled, so I couldn't use it. Oh well... lol
If you're using a computer that doesn't have JAWS, there's a little
program you can keep on your thumb drive that'll install the video
hooks. It's annoying to have to do that especially in a computer lab on
a college campus, but all the "normal" screen readers need video hooks
on the computer. It is better than installing a full copy of JAWS if you
don't need to, though.
If you want to cary your license with you can pay to get a dongle. You'd
have to plug it into a second USB port though, unlike the dolphin pen
where the license is already on the USB drive. It doesn't bug me as much
as it used to that FS doesn't do it that way, in fact that is one of the
things they pitched to differentiate them. They were more aiming for
being able to cary your settings to another computer that has JAWS and
use them, which is exactly what I've done. So you can buy a gig thumb
drive for 10 bucks and install JAWS on it.
A couple other things you can't do with it though. You can't use Tandem,
and you can't use a Braille display. That second one makes no sense to
me, because the dolphin pen, Window-Eyes Mobile, and Serotek keys all do
it.
There's also a thumb drive version of MAGic, and you can run them both
at the same time from the same thumb drive.
Brian
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