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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