Got myself a new laptop

[ryner1988]

Around a month ago, my trusty Lenovo laptop, first Stacye's then handed down to me when she upgraded to Mac, finally died. It would only hum when plugged into the charger, and on battery power it would literally do nothing at all. My in-laws have been using the same computer guy for years and he's helped us out of many a tech jam. He told me that either the charger or the battery, maybe both, had worn out and to start with buying a new charger to see if that would solve the problem. Well, needless to say, that didn't work -- the same issue presented when the laptop was plugged into the new charger.

Stacye's parents took the laptop to the Windows man and he tried it with a new battery, still no dice. At this point it was determined that the mother board was likely fried, an expensive repair, better just buy a new one.

So, I have not been on here, nor much of anywhere online, very often over the past month. I used my phone occasionally, such as when I wanted to come on here and tell you all about my new washer and dryer, but this is not at all my preference. I have a screen reader on my phone, just like I do on my computer, but the process of using my phone with a screen reader, in addition to typing on it, I find slow, painful, and not much worth my time. Smart phones are the way of life for most people, but I am a computer guy through and through.

Since my parents helped me with the new washer and dryer, I finally caved and bought a new ASUS laptop from Best Buy. It's a great machine so far -- just got it this afternoon -- with an I7 13th generation processor, 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of SSD storage. For my needs, I think this computer is perfect and I hope to get many years of use from it. I certainly am glad to be back online in the way that is comfortable for me, and I hope to be around more often.

I hope you all are having a very happy holiday season.

Ryne

 

[mattl]

Nice system, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

 

Did Best Buy install your needed software?  Question - how does your screen reader handle typos?  does it pronounce them as is or does it auto correct?

 

[ryner1988]

Reply #1

It came with Windows 11 installed from the factory. I used Windows Narrator to get through all the setup screens and then to download my preferred screen reader. After that I commenced to downloading all my other programs.

Narrator has gotten a lot better over the past few years, in that I can now use it effectively to set everything up, but it's still not quite good enough to use as a screen reader daily driver. I imagine it'll get there someday though.

As far as typos, honestly I just bang out what I'm typing and then look it over at the end. If the screen reader sounds weird when it says a word that's a pretty good indication to me that it's a typo, and I can use my arrow keys to navigate to the proper place and fix it. I actually have it set not to speak every character when I'm typing, because it can't keep up anyway and I find that distracting. And honestly, if I don't catch every mistake, as long as my meaning is clear enough and it's not something like a professional email or document, I say oh well. LOL

But now I'm a bit self-conscious since you mentioned it...was this post full of typos? Heh

 

[mattl]

I wasn't inferring you made typos, it's just I notice a moderate number of typos in various threads here wondered how the screen reader managed that.

 

It been years since I used windows, I need to install it on my laptop at some point.  Have a couple of programs I need to use, but not urgent so I put it off.  All my computers are running Linux Mint, very happy with it.

 

BTW - I didn't notice any typos in your post.

 

[ryner1988]

Oh yes, the typos of others make for an interesting screen reader experience sometimes. Often I know what people are trying to say, but occasionally I have to go letter by letter to figure it out. I think in a lot of cases people use dictation and don't check it over before posting, and I think most of us know that dictation/autocomplete has a total mind of its own sometimes. Best to always check it over when using it IMO.

 

[seedub]

I'm not very happy with Asus these days. A laptop that I bought new only four years ago is not eligible to be upgraded to Windows 11. The battery needs replacing but there is not a compatible battery I can get. The wireless network adapter is shot. I am looking eagerly forward to ditching that thing and getting something else and this time it will likely be Dell.

--Chris