Hi Phil,

Your new mac offers built in voice dictation so you may not need Dragon.

There is a fantastic website exclusively for visually impaired/blind Mac
users called:
http://applevis.com
It has a great wealth of information including blogs, podcasts, interviews,
how-tos etc. regarding everything you can think of about Mac computers,
iPhones, iPods, iPads, MacBook Airs, MacBooks and gobs and gobs of reviews
of Mac and iOS apps.  

There is also a link on the front page that provides a variety of first
steps in switching to a Mac.

Having said all of that, I use a MacBook Air and run Windows7 on it.  I can
boot into the Mac operating system or into Windows7 whenever I wish.  There
is a built in program on all Macs called BootCamp that allows for using
different operating systems.

Congratulations!!

Kent Plemmons, KK4FFF, Clyde, NC


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2015 1:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Mac Attack

Well, on the surface, this doesn't appear to have anything to do with ham
radio but it does.  I've been sitting around, off and on, for weeks, maybe
even months, trying to figure out what I was going to do about a computer. 
This one is 13 years old, has parts scrounged from other computers, served 4
power supplies, runs 4 gigs of mismatched RAM, burned up I don't know how
many fans, uses a pair of 500 GB drives, the second one for backup, and if
it wasn't for a computer geek friend I've had for 20 years, it wouldn't even
be running at all.  My wife and I have been using talking cell phones for
years and jumped to the iPhones when the I4 came out.  I never thought I'd
like a touch screen but I took to it, at my advanced age, like duck to
water.  We've each upgraded as each iPhone came out and frankly, I was one
step away from going strictly iPhone access if my windows computer died. 
Plus, my wife and I are both retired, living on social security, and buying
upgrades for jaws just has finally come to an end.  Plus, I'm still using XP
and have been complaining I'd have to start learning windows all over again
to upgrade to a new windows machine.  My wife jumped in with both feet a
year ago and we bought her the Mac Ayr.  Within weeks, she has learned
enough to turn off her windows machine, which is on its last leg anyhow, and
she strictly uses the Mac Ayr and pays all our bills, orders our groceries
from WalMart, does all her emails, and synchronizes her Mac Ayr with her
iPad and iPhone.  Today I discovered the book from National Braille Press
called Everything You Wanted To Know About Macs or something like that. 
Reading through the table of contents gave me hope I would have a reference
to walk me through changing to a Mac computer.  So, I logged on to Best Buy,
it's only a mile away, and logged on to Apple.com for more information about
the MacMini and when I saw I could get 4 Gigs of RAM, what I'm running now,
and a 500 Gig hard drive for 480 dollars, I started thinking twice.  Next
week, I'm going over an between now and then, I'll decide on the 500 GB
model or the 8 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, plus a wireless keyboard. 
Before then, I'll start reading the book from NBP I mentioned and pumping my
wife for what she knows since she taught me most of what I know about my
iPhone in the first place.  I've already considered a couple of ham programs
that may not be available for Macs and also Gold Wave for my sound editor
but I'm sure that won't be too difficult to replace.  I've gotten rather
addicted to using apps of all kinds so having all those plus, my iTune
music, and everything else sinc with the MacMini will be very nice.  Then
there is iCloud for auto backup which I already use for my iPhone. 
Additionally, I have gotten hooked on listening to Alex for a voice
synthesizer and the other voices, including Eloquence and the human quality
voices, just aren't cutting it with me and my hearing loss these days.  Alex
works great and of course there are no more jaws upgrades for a couple of
hundred bucks a pop since Mac upgrades are free.  So, if any of you Mac hams
out there have any suggestions, I'd like to hear it relating to ham software
or whatever is appropriate.  Oh, one more thing.  Dragon Dictate for 150
dollars really turns me on so I'm planning on getting it, too.  My office
desk sure is going to like all that extra space with that tiny little box
they call a MacMini.

Phil.
K0NX