Agreed with what you said. I always come back to eloquence no matter what. I think with how scriptable jaws is, you would think developers would put more effort to put out a ton of scripts for all kind of applications for different needs. While some certainly exist, i think there could be more.

It is worth noting that many of the bugs in VS2010 are VS2010 and not the screen reader, most annoyingly the alt-tab phantom menu bar.  Things like the debugger work in both because, due to crap from Microfail, those parts have no UIA or MSAA representation, not to mention the fact that parts of VS expose via one while parts expose via the other.  The net result is that you need a mirror display driver to really do it at all.  This is improving with every VS version, fortunately; there was recently a survey as well.  But we aren't there yet.
But as for Window-eyes, there are three things worth noting.
Firstly, the deal with Microsoft was the beginning of the end for GW Micro, which no longer exists as an entity in its own right.  They are now part of Ai Squared, and--while no such official announcement has been made to my knowledge--every indicator I, Mr. Hofstader, and everyone I know has seen is that it's the first victim of the modern era of screen readers (NVDA+built-in screen readers).  There are persistent rumors that Narrator in Windows 9 is going to have scripting, driving it even further into the ground.
Secondly, there is a crippling bug experienced by everyone who tried it along with me when it became free.  You can't be a multi-screen reader user with it, not without closing all apps.  Apparently Window-eyes isn't smart enough to quite work when apps are already open, and I must say that it has a cripplingly long startup time anyway.  It is sad but true that using multiple screen readers is now a necessity in many cases for actual, real-world, job-quality productivity.
And thirdly, Window-eyes is not standards compliant, or even up to the modern era of web browsing.  I'm a member of 3 Mouse Technology, an accessibility cooperative that includes--among other people--Mr. Hofstader and one of the programmers behind System Access.  For about 3 weeks, everyone we were talking to about possible contracts switched to Window-eyes, multiple organizations evaluated it, and in the end they all rejected and went back to Jaws/NVDA.  The reason for this seems to be this lack of standards compliance; modern web accessibility techniques (Aria, HTML5) are very incomplete.  Considering Window-eyes Vs. Jaws, even a simple web page like the NVDA timeline gave Window-eyes trouble.  All sorts of blank lines, duplicated items, etc, etc, etc.  To me, this was the killer: I am a programer, and consequently spend much of my time on very complex web sites.  I never evaluated it on IA2 or UIA, but that's hard to do: IA2 is MSAA and screen readers get useful stuff out of it even without supporting it, and UIA has an automatic proxy.  I.e. legacy screen readers will at least get something, but implementing those standards gives more.

It would seem the bugs in jaws have only gotten worse in the past couple of versions. One that i remember, was how the program would hang, and sometimes, down right crash when using firefox. I think chris hophstater is doing the right thing in his blogs, basically displaying to the world that screen reading technology as a market can't last in the current state of NVDA being free, and just as capable. Android has a ways to go in the accessibility front, IOS is pretty good. I sort of hope that microsoft steps up to the plate and makes windows the most accessible that it could be. Think of a world without freedom scientific and GW Micro.

Thanks for the links, and the great post Trenton. You always make great points. i didn't know all those features of window eyes, thanks again.

the only problem that I have had with window-eyes is that it is a process hog. But other then that, it works just fine.

Camlorn, yeah, I agree with you that the deal with Microsoft was the beginning of the end of GW Micro. They made that deal just before they merged with AI Squared so I think they knew they were doomed as a company and that is why they were willing to essentially give their flagship product away for free. Plus as you accurately stated I have also heard Narrator is getting a major upgrade in Windows 9, and if the version in Windows 8 and 8.1 is any indication it is only a matter of time before Narrator eventually over takes commercial screen readers like Jaws, Window-Eyes, Supernova, etc. So something like Window-Eyes has a fairly short life expectancy if we assume Narrator will soon replace them as the dominate screen reader in the Windows market.

About the issue of multiple screen readers that is all too true. As someone who uses NVDA almost all the time now I found Window Eyes extremely irritating when it came to switching to and from another screen reader like NVDA. That issue is going to effect people who regularly switch between screen readers so I'll agree it is not the best solution for someone not willing to settle on Window-eyes as their primary screen reader.

As standards compliant goes I will also agree Window-Eyes has been falling behind in some areas. It doesn't work that well with Internet Explorer or Firefox, and in fact that was the single most reason why I dropped Window-Eyes in favor of NVDA. I had been a fairly regular and committed Win-Eyes user for many years, but when I found out a free screen reader like NVDA blew Window-Eyes away when it came to web browsing there was no question which one I was going to adopt as my primary screen reader.

Trenton, the Jaws scripting language is completely proprietary to Jaws. It is not C++, but some custom language created by Henter-Joice specifically for Jaws before Henter-Joice became Freedom Scientific. In the old days they use to be more open about the script language, offer free documentation, but of recent years they are more tight lipped about it and seem to want to charge for documentation, classes, etc and they can frankly shove it with a long poll in my opinion.

NVDA is completely free and besides being open source all of its modules are written in Python which is an off the shelf scripting language.  Someone does not have to pay for documentation or take classes to script NVDA if need should arise to do so. I think barring Narrator coming along and steeling the show NVDA will eventually overtake Jaws both in the private and business sector because being able to expand the screen reader is a necessity in today's computing environment and nobody is going to want to pay out for classes and documentation to do that when free and low cost alternatives exist.

Plus as Camlorn pointed out roomer is in Windows 9 Microsoft will be drastically overhauling Narrator, and will be adding scripting etc to the screen reader. Once they do that Jaws can kiss its ass goodbye because I am sure Narrator with access scripts through the Windows Scripting Host and support something like Javascript or VBScript or both. that will offer off the shelf scripting support that any amateur programmer will probably already know and can use to expand Narrator's functionality. Once that happens Jaws advantage over Narrator will be gone, and Freedom Scientific won't be able to get by with the excuse of charging big bucks for documentation or training for Jaws scripting like they have in the past.

Moreover, think about state agencies. Right now they are willing to pay someone to write scripts for Jaws for job specific software, but if Microsoft comes with a screen reader that can do the same they'll probably shift loyalties to Microsoft or a Microsoft Certified Engineer who knows how to script Narrator. It would be much easier than getting someone who has been certified by Freedom Scientific, and may even cost less in the bargain.

as a 11 year jaws user, I have to say Jaws is better.
I feel that windoweyes is way behind times. Their web accesibility is crap, the screen reader takes forever to load, and I've had trouble reading stuff properly with it. Jaws works much better for what I need, and I haven't had a second thought about it. While there may be a few bugs present, it doesn't make the product unusable. As to the demo of jaws, the only ristriction is the 40 minute mode, nothing else. There isn't anything that says you can't access websites. I'm looking forward to the new jaws 16 release, and will most certainly upgrade it when it comes up, because I have 1 free upgrade left. The hanging issue is still present, however with the new keystroke to force unload jaws, insert windows f4, this isn't much of an issue anymore. FS was aware that jaws hung, so put in a keystroke to force unload it. The scripting interface is also much better. I think you get what you pay for with the price that jaws is, yet people complain that it's overpriced. Tandom is also nice, if you want to train someone on Jaws, or help them fix problems.
The problem I have with windoweyes and NVDA, (forgive me for mentioning nvda in this post), is the fact that you have to download apps and addons to make stuff work right or add new features. This, In my opinion, is absolutely stupid. I don't want to waist my time downloading stuff that is already included with jaws. I know NVDA is opensource and that there are copyright issues, but still. And gw micro had no excuse not to include in their product what freedom scientific has already. No. Instead, you have to download apps and all these programs to make things work right. If you don't, some things are virtually unusable. I never have to download jaws scripts for anything. Stuff just seems to work right from the get-go, without any messing arround on my part.

Keep in mind that NVDA has had far less development than other screenreaders. Jaws has had i believe over 15 years of development, where as NVDA hasn't. Many addons, such as the addon for putty (ssh client), were incorporated into nvda's main distribution. Which programs work with jaws immediately that don't work with Window Eyes or NVDA?

Regarding the on topic portion of this topic I was a window eyes user before NVDA. In my experience jaws just seemed slow for some reason.