The Coburn Blog

Well, I got my copy of Zoomtext in the mail the other day.. VR got me the wrong version though, they got me a License just for the Magnifier, but check this out

If I press CTRL-ALT-C in gmail, I get this

or, if I hold down the ALT key, and press + or - to zoom or back up, I get this

This above screenshot is set to 1.5x Zoom, but it can go anywhere from 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x, 4x, all the way up to 36x. I just hold down the ALT key, and press either the + or - sign on the numeric keypad to go up/down zoom levels. pretty nifty eh?

Notice the cross around the mouse pointer, they call that Crosshair, which us visually impaired use to find the cursor. Also you may notice in the first photo after the “username: tcoburn” where it has a blue bar above and below, thats the text cursor. Thats called a wedge, thats used to locate the cursor better. Both crosshairs and cursor functions can be changed to any color, or any style, you want. You can put a circle around the cursor or mouse pointer if I want, or I can make the desktop black AND zoom, just the magnifier alone has a ton of different settings like that. Its also got a desktop finder, and web finder, to locate links or specific text in a document.

which is all fine and cool, my only gripe, is they didn’t get me the Magnifier/Reader License, probably because it was cheaper.. The Magnifier was $398, and the Magnifier/Reader is $599, so VR probably thought they could get away with getting me just the magnifier for my classes.

Only thing is, the speech/reader part of the program, also has features that are real useful to me. For instance, the reader can speak stuff to you. There’s settings for tweaking the speech just how you want it, like you can set it to speak just content of a website, and not titlebars or other useless junk. same with documents, there’s a docreader that will read your email to you, or echo as you type, or read your MS word, excel, and Access documents to you, as much or little as you want, which can all be customized in the settings.

My Independant Living Skills trainer, is looking into why VR didn’t get me the reader license. I asked aisquared how much it would cost to upgrade to 9.1 magnifier/reader, and they said $299, and that price just applies for the next 60 days, after that, it would cost $525 to upgrade, so if there going to do it, they’d better do it in the next 60 days, otherwise I suppose I could swing it emptying out my 401k, but I am hoping VR will do it so I won’t have to.

pretty neat though eh? It also has settings to remove specific problem colors, like for me white backgrounds are too hard for me to read, thats why my blog here is on a black background, because whites and greys are too hard for me to see, too bright, and zoomtext has settings to take out those problem colors, like on google or gmail for instance, or even Word and Excel, although I don’t have Office on my computer so I really don’t care about that so much.

however, Ivy Tech bookstore offers a single student License for Office 2003 for $70 that I’m thinking of getting for my Access 2003 class this summer, because having to goto the library every day to do my homework assignments there is starting to really be a problem, esp since they don’t have Zoomtext on the computers there, so I may end up paying the $70 if I can find it somewhere. I just can’t use OpenOffice because its a class specifically in Access 2003, I’ll be MCSE Certified n Access at the end of the course, assuming I pass it of course. but I hate to purchase it even for $70 if I can only use it for 1 semester, so I thought about illegally downloading it from BitTorrent or someplace like that, but because MS has this mandatory “genuine” bullcrap now, I can’t do that either, so for now I’ve been walking to the library everyday, until I can get a copy of MS Office 2003 somehow.

Besides, even if I did want to shell out the bucks for an Office product, I’d rather get Office 2007, because the school is switching to that next semester, so it would be like paying $70 for nothing really, so for now I’m just trying to get by best I can.

So far, I’m half way thru my assignments in my first online class.. I like taking this online class, its fun. They have a little forum thingy where student can talk to eachother.. Some of the students have already talked about having a study group gettogether, but I can’t go because its in Elkhart, an hour drive away, which I couldn’t get to not being able to drive and all that, so I’m on my own this semester.. I just hope I pass the MCSE Exam, I’m really nervous about that at the moment. For those who don’t know, MCSE is the Microsoft Certification, Access 2003 speciality. which really won’t do me a whole lot of good at this point, because I would have to take the test again to be 2007 Certified anyway when companies switch over, but its one step closer to my degree, and who knows, maybe that Certification will come in handy for something oneday. Its like a little diploma in itself, angie has one for Excel 2000, its pretty neat, but the problem with it is its not a lifetime certification, so like, every time a new version comes out u have to be retested again, which is kinda a drag. so I’m going for A+ Core/ A+ Operating Systems instead, because thats a lifetime Certification.

have a good day everyone