Your advice is sound.

However, my daughter is only 10 (now) and wasn't using her computer extensively at the time the SMA ran out. We started off with a PAC Mate with a display and a new computer with JAWS for her when she was four. Freedom got us with a couple of sma's and a couple of hma's (or whatever the hardware agreements are).

Soon after we bought all this (she was age 5) , our daughter started working with Braille 'n Speak. Then moved to an mPower at 6, and on to an Apex BrailleNote at age 7, so decided to hold off until she was ready to start really using the FS items more before that became a place to spend even more money. Besides, we needed to buy various iDevices for her as well along the way. And other little items like Victor Readers and such. There is always somewhere to spend more money on technology.

Actually, we realize now that we actually could have used the JAWS license with her PAC mate and had working JAWS 12, 13, and 14, before we upgraded, but I don't think it has caused her a major setback. It actually would have been nice if they had told us the PAC Mate included the JAWS feature up front. That extra $900 was hard to part with then, and I'd have saved the original SMA money plus the upgrade money if I had only bought now-- something like $600, and be in the exact same place now.

We've been using her Apex extremely heavily for several years now. It is where most everything is done for her schoolwork and personal notes and a good deal of her online needs are handled between the Apex and her iDevices.

That said, were heading into 5th grade and we need to get more up to speed with our jAWS as well as all the rest, so it was time, and the hassle of using the PacMate as a huge JAWS "DONGLE" was just too much of a hassle not to move forward with a regular license. I may need to get her a laptop pretty soon anyhow, so we'll be all set for that when the time comes. The only problem is she's gonna need a wagon or small golf cart to haul all her technology around with her pretty soon, LOL.

Good advice though-- I appreciate it!

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2013, at 9:57 PM, "Lee Maschmeyer" <leemer1@...> wrote:

For what it's worth (every penny you pay for this advice <grin>) screenreaders are far too much in flux to skimp on updates. If you have the money it is close to imperative, imho, to purchase every single update. And, when you do an automatic upgrade, destroy your personal settings for that version and use Settings Center to recreate them from scratch. Personal settings are, for example, the ones in:

c:\users\lmaschm\appdata\roaming\freedom scientific\jaws\

This is the path on Windows 7. Other versions have slight variations. And of course replace lmaschm with your (or your daughter's) ID.

Just shooting off my mouth but it really is a good idea to buy new versions so you're lucky you did so,

--

Lee Maschmeyer

"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."
--Lewis Carroll

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