Yesterday I overcame my procrastination and I am now wishing that I
hadn't. I remember that when I was using Windows XP I kept putting off
upgrading because of trepidation about learning a new operating system.
Then in 2014 my computer went kaput and I had to upgrade to Windows 7.
It was not as bad as I expected and I learned my way around Windows 7
pretty quickly. But despite that experience I have been putting off
upgrading to Windows 10 for the same reasons. Well, Windows 7 becomes
obsolete on January 14, so yesterday I prepared myself for a hassle and
downloaded Windows 10. I won't describe all the hassle that was
involved, but it was a big hassle, indeed. It also turns out that it is
a lot more different from Windows 7 than Windows 7 was different from
Windows XP, so I have a lot of learning to do. But let me concentrate on
the problems I am having related to Bookshare volunteering. When I was
installing Windows 10 the dialog informed me that there were two apps on
my computer that were not compatible with Windows 10 and I would have to
uninstall them before I could proceed. One was JAWS 15. Fine, I don't
use that anymore anyway. So I went ahead and uninstalled it. However,
The other caused me a good bit of consternation. It was Open Book 9.
That is my main number one tool for scanning books for Bookshare and
also for reading my snail mail. But I couldn't otherwise continue, so I
saved the book I am currently working on to my documents and went ahead
and uninstalled it. I was on page 207 of a 357 page book. Because of
that and another problem with JAWS that cropped up after the
installation I was going to call Freedom Scientific technical support
today and ask them about it, but I forgot that they are not available on
weekends and I will have to wait until Monday. Not only do I now not
have Open Book installed, but as far as I can tell I have also lost the
book that I saved and every other document in my documents folder. I say
as far as I can tell because I thought I had also lost all of my
bookmarks, but somehow I did manage to restore those this morning. I
have a bunch of documents that I really did not want to lose, but
relating to Bookshare I appear to have lost three books that are either
being proofread or are on the checkout list and the book I was currently
working on. As for the books I have finished, well, if a proofreader has
a problem with one then, at least as of right now, I don't have a copy
to check for them. As for the one I was currently working on, I really
hate to have done 207 pages worth of meticulous work on it only to lose
it entirely or not to be able to proceed on it. Frankly, if Open Book is
incompatible with Windows 10 I would have expected that by now it would
have been mentioned on this list, so I was not expecting that at all.
The obvious solution is to switch to Kurzweil, but there is a reason
that I have not done so already. It is really expensive and even with
the discount for having Open Book it is still expensive. But what I am
asking for now is for any comments or advice that any of you may have.
As frustrating as it can be I rather enjoy volunteering for Bookshare
and I would hate to give it up, but for right now I am at something of
an impasse.
--
___
Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
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