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Re: Installing JAWs on Parallels

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From: Jared Smith
Date: May 30, 2007 9:50AM

On 5/30/07, Alastair Campbell wrote:

> I just wondered if anyone had managed to install JAWs on OSX via
> parallels? It would be a very useful option for testing.

It is installed on my MacBook with Parallels. It complained about the
video intercept driver, but everything seems to work just fine. The
biggest problem I had was that I couldn't use the JAWS key which is
INSERT by default - the MacBook doesn't have an INSERT key. I used
rempkey.exe to map F11 to INSERT and it seems to work fine.

I haven't found any discrepancies in output from my Windows native
computer (though I'll do some further testing on forms). Parallels is
now my preferred platform for using JAWS. JAWS never worked very well
on any other PC I used - it crashed often, was slow and buggy, and the
video intercept driver always caused problems even when JAWS wasn't
running. With Parallels, I don't have to worry about it messing up my
system and if it does, I can reboot in about 10 seconds (which is also
nice if you have the 40 minute mode). If things go really bad, it only
takes 15 minutes to reinstall Windows XP.

Oh, and make sure you have service pack 2 for Windows XP. You might
also try Boot Camp - http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ It's not as
slick as Parallels, but it's free and uses the actual video hardware
as opposed to the virtual drivers. I've not tried JAWS on Boot Camp
though others report that it works fine.

Jared Smith
WebAIM