I know something about each of them, and both unfortunately, don't work well with screen readers. There are dialogs and prompts and the like that they display when they don't understand what you said, and you normally don't hear those without some add-on like j-say, which only works with Dragon. There is an add-on for the vista one, from the folks who make j-say, and it's called J-Vist, but it's very limited in what it does; it's not nearly so powerful as J-say. Still, the vista speech recognition is free, J-vist is low-cost, and you could call the makers of J-vist and speak with them to hear their opinions of what will work for you using it, and what won't. There's an optional product, from MS, to download to accompany the Vista speech recognition. It's called windows speech recognition macros, and you'll need it, and you will need to learn to use it, in order for vista to approach the power and flexibility of Dragon. Still, someone did tell me that Dragon had dramaticly lowered it's prices due to the competition from Vista; maybe the folks who make J-say have also done that. In my opinion it's a lot of trouble to use speech recognition, and even a lot more for a blind person; I really doubt someone with a little carpal tunnel is going to go through it or spend the money. Only someone with almost incapacitating carpal tunnel, or who has little hand mobility, will do all that needs doing, unless you've got an unusual situation which requires hands-free use of the pc. I play with the vista speech recognition as a hobby, and I've put out an example macro which ties it to window eyes to show how they can be made to work together. If money is a problem, and you own window eyes, I think you could make windows vista speech recognition and the optional macros package work with window eyes if you spent some time learning each of their macros packages. If you don't own window eyes, contact the folks who make j-say to see what their pricing is, and what version of Dragon they recommend you have (I seem to recall it's only the $99 version if you own J-say). hth, Chip ------------------------------ Chip Orange Database Administrator Florida Public Service Commission Chip.Orange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (850) 413-6314 (Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.) > -----Original Message----- > From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Schwartz > Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 4:40 PM > To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Vista, speech input and jaws > > I am in my sixties, work in mental health profession and seem > to spend more time documenting than treating patients. I > fear that I am developing carpal tunnel syndrome and would > like to spend less time on the keyboard. Could anyone > comment on the efficacy of Vista's speech input feature. I > was thinking Dragon, but this requires Dragon Pro and J-say > from T and T Consultancy in order to run with jaws. We are > talking about $1500 here. Also, does anyone know anything > about using Dragon, plain vanilla, with XP and jaws. Are > they truly incompatible or is it just easier to use J-say. > > I thank you all in advance for any input. > > -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: 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