Windows 7

I recently got a new computer from Dell because some of Dragon’s higher commands were disabled. They were by no means critical in nature, but I would’ve liked to see how they worked. I don’t have a money tree, so I couldn’t afford a top of the line computer. I looked in the Dell outlet store, and got an Inspiron 570. I got Windows 7 because unlike Windows Vista, I heard good things about the current windows operating system.

I must say it works really well, and the accessibility options were fairly easy to setup. For one thing the magnifier option is right on the start menu, and you can change the level with a simple plus or minus sign. Also, you can choose between a number of views similar to Zoomtext, such as a scrolling magnifier, a docked magnifier that only enlarges part of the screen, and the full screen magnifier which I have on. Next to the views tab is an options menu where you can invert colors, have the magnified view follow the mouse, keyboard, and text insertion point. A number of narration options are also available, but I don’t need them. I’ll look at them at another time, and tell you my readers what I find.

Another feature that I really like is the speech recognition option, and this really is recognition. In Windows XP you could only dictate documents, and if you chose to do that then you might as well type the documents, it would go faster. With Windows 7 you can switch between programs, open programs, and dictate documents with a fair degree of accuracy. One has to set up the microphone, and then train it. If it’s a quality program, then it is worth the time.

I also setup my new computer, and put the other one in Mark’s old room. They were fairly easy to set up, even though I did most things by feel. I plugged everything into the surge protector I also purchased a monitor, and the other computer went active too. The only annoying part involved hooking up the cable running from the back of the monitor to the computer.

In the next entry, I’ll elucidate more of what I did in the previous two months.