Hi Greg, I'm Allison and I'd like to welcome you to the Mac Visionaries list. I just switched after being a Windows and Window-Eyes user in April. THe learning curve is not too bad. THe Mac comes with the usual setup rocedure. You can enact VoiceOver by pressing command F5 during setup. THis allows you to program the date, time, enter in user name, password etc. In your message, you mentioned a couple of things that caught my attention. The things you need to be able to do such as: word processing, research on the internet, reading PDFs and RFB and D books. Okay I'll take these one at a time and outline which programs on the Mac need to be used to accomplish these tasks. Please keep in mind, I'm certainly not the most accomplished user, far from it. But I just love to help people. I was once in your position and debated for about a year whether to switch.
To do word processing creating microsoft word documents, you would use a program called Iwork. This can be purchased from http://www.amazon.com To view PDF's the Mac comes with a program called Preview. This is better than Adobe Acrobat in Windows. You can save docks in this Preview program I believe as well. Browsing the internet is done with the onboard app Safari, or you can download WebKit free of charge. I think there is a demo of Iwork lurking around somewhere if I'm not mistaken. There is a woman named Anne who does a lot of things with Iwork, or Pages which is the app to write word docks. Numbers is the Excel spreadsheet app on the Mac. Pages is just awesome, takes a bit of getting used to but I really like it now. Iwork is akin to MS Suite. OCR they haven't worked out on the Mac as of yet, I still use Kurzweil, but I'm pushing the state to purchase an Intel Reader from Humanware or the Sophie from Handytech. There is a version of Skype for the Mac, and as far as chat clients go there is Adium that you can download I forget fro where. I do have a copy which I could send you offlist since it's free. It's not pirated software. I hope I've helped, I love my Macbook I have a Macbook White Case I believe it is. It has a 250 GB hard drive, with a CD/DVD writable drive, Itunes, Preview, Safari, Apple Mail, Ical, and lots of other included programs. I also like the fact that Apple includes a Snow Leopard Disc. Well, VoiceOver does most things very well, in a different way than Jaws or Window-Eyes. I have a few podcasts on it, and so does Mike Arrigo and also there is an australian group called Vision Australia who have some great tutorials up as well. The only thing I can think of is the RFBD books. I'm unsure if there is a player for the Mac that will play these, but I know the Victor Reader Stream can play RFBD books with a key from RFBD. Well, I hope I have been of some help. Have a great day. Allison My birds are winged blessings, they help me soar! On Jul 21, 2010, at 10:18 PM, Greg Aikens wrote: > Hello everyone, > I am brand new to the list. I am looking at getting a new computer and > have been thinking for a while about getting a mac. I am starting an > M.Ed. at Vanderbilt University in Education of the Visually Impaired > this fall and my biggest concern is being able to do my schoolwork on > the mac. I have heard and read all kinds of info about what does and > doesn't work with voice over and much of the info conflicts. I was > wondering if someone could point me to some resources which might help > me decide if making the switch is right for me. Any information about > how big the learning curve will be for a guy used to Jaws and windows > vista would also be appreciated. > > Things I must be able to do include word processing, reading pdf's, > accessing books from bookshare and RFB and D, research on the > internet, accessing course notes and presentations, accessing > educational sites such as Blackboard, working with braille files, and > OCR. > > Things that are also pretty important to me are access to chat > programs like google talk or whatever the mac equivalent is and Skype. > That's all I can think of at the moment. > > I know this is a long list of things but I'm not really sure where to > start. Any direction, specific info on one of these topics, or general > info about making the transition would be great. > > Thanks for your help. > > Greg Aikens > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
