Hi afrim.
yeah but thing is, it's not totally free is it? If you're not talking about NVDA then sorry. But it's not totally free, yes the download is free but a lot of people are donating to NVDA and that's how it's kept up. I think it will keep going for quite a long time, I'm hoping it manages to stay free for another 5 or 6 years. But I think you might have to eventually pay for NVDA but I really don't think it will be anything near as much as other screen readers.

Hi.
I don't have much to say because most have been said so far.
Someone was mentioning a much better touch cursor in Jaws. Hmm... If that's the case, why does Jaws 16 not include an on-screen keyboard for touch screens? Seems they have dropped improvements for touch screens in version 16... that have worked in NVDA for quite a while now.
But well... All screenreaders have both good and bad things. I'm a happy Jaws user at my job, where I need to work with office 2010. There are some damn annoying bugs, but NVDA sucks in Office 2010 and Outlook, so that's not an option for me. I use NVDA privately, which works fine for my tasks, and I'm also using Voiceover on my Mac and IOS devices.

I myself found jaws better than NVDA working in microsoft office products. I don't know about you, but at least in word jaws is really great.
And also about the on-screen keyboard: windows itself includes an on-screen keyboard, they do have just to make it accessible with jaws and that's all.
Wish you all a good time!

It has drop to 120 dollars. However!
You have to drop from a pro to a home license.
Please hear FSCast 94 , for more info bout that.

@afrim, Do you really think that microsoft will ever make the on screen keyboard accessible? No. They will not. It isn't meant to be accessible.
Scripting support? NVDA's got that
Functionality with metro apps without using another curser? NVDA's got that; JAWS doesn't.
Use with Office 2010/2013/2014? NvDA's got that.
Addon support? NVDA's got that.
Remote access support? NVDA's got that, in a sense.
And NVDA's got soooooooooooooo much more. Sure, JAWS might have alot more features, but you know what? FS is only performing one task: Software bloat. They keep adding features and give you know way to remove them. And if you add more features than that which is necessary, people start to break away from your software.
One other thing that NVDA's got that JAWS doesn't is that its updated more often than JAWS is. Its because its updated by the community itself, not just people in-house. So here's my likes: I like JAWS and Window-Eyes. They're both a lot better than JAWS is, in my opinion!

The most silly problem I've ever come across with, is that people when unliking the features of a program look always to remove them. It's the same as I've heard from some people on android who wanted to remove talk back from their system, and other people who wanted to remove narrator and other programs  on their harddisks, so as to remove as more as features you need to free space on your hard drive. It's not so much I think 300 megabitesfrom windows. I think nobody is suffering from free space  in your hard drive, so why should we remove such available features it offers.

finally I found someone who knows what is really jaws. Indeed, jaws has more features, and one of the most important is the opportunity to refresh the screen of jaws, something that doesn't exist on NVDA. also, PC cursor, Virtual PC cursor, Invisible cursor and recently Touch cursor are very good features. As I stated before, or as you said, why should I download add-ones when you already got them all in Jaws. and something that I appreciate so much, though NVDA uses eloquence, if you look carefully it in Jaws, is way better integrated, and much faster. also, the eloquence on NVDA is not used officially from now, if they used it officially, why wouldn't they include it in the download package? The built-in voice E-speak is really incomprehensive, and I can't use it on school or anywhere else. really can't understand it. They are complaining nowadays so much about the space that jaws needs on the harddrive. I don't really think that 300 or more megabites are really much, because we are all using computers which are built-in more than 200 harddrive space, so guess it's not so much. Another point which I love so much in Jaws, are the updates which come free, and they really improve the performance.

Firstly they will be adding the ability to buy the remote add on for Jaws Home, the difference from now on will simply be that home is for non commercial use much as the home editions of MS Office.

Afrim, I'll freely admit Jaws has generally worked pretty well with MS Office but there's more to computers than Office. I'm primarily a Jaws user for various reasons, I'm too lazy to really bother learning NVDA, it works better with VipMud and so on, but open source software has a lot more going for it than you credit it with. Firstly NVDA has received substantial grants from Mozilla and Microsoft in order to improve the product including with their respective products, secondly there's the communal development perspective. Many people can all add small changes and with that many eyes on the code, so to speak, bug squashing becomes a lot easier. Now open source isn't perfect, it can have issues with people avoiding doing the really big stuff for example, but it is a viable methodology.

I'll say again, do you really think Windows is all that much better for its core market than Linux or iOS that much better than Android? Linux and Android are both open source and freely available, Windows certainly isn't free and you pay such a premium for an iOS device that iOS certainly does have a large cost attatched. By the same token do you believe that a newspaper is that much better than the free news you get on TV? Yes the relative costs compared with Jaws are much lower but their market is so much larger they likely make larger profits than FS in many cases, this is certainly the case for Windows and iOS.

Price is not a guarantee of quality. I'm generally of the mindset to pay extra for a higher quality product for many reasons but I recognise you need to be careful about it, you need to be led by quality and not price. FS does seem to have busier development than NVDA but we each need to consider, would these changes be something I'm going to benefit from? Would improvements to the way Jaws works with a particular program matter to me if I don't use that program? And even if I will benefit from a substantial amount of the changes are they enough of a difference to warrant the price tag? If the answer is yes then great, Jaws isn't as terrible as many people think and it's a perfectly good screen reader. Just bear in mind that not everyone has the same needs and priorities you do.

by the way, you say that android is better than iOS? Yes, indeed, android is better, because it's powered by google, which is  most used web browser in the world, also, it provide one of the safest email addresses such as Gmail, moreover, there are  lots of other features on google such as google +, google talk, google translate, and even android with it's google play. So, in this way google has many products which make them raise billions of dollars, because it's one of the gratest packages in the world, and, therefore, when raising billions of dollars, they can pay good coders and programmers, which can make precious work, and release great products. so they have more chances to promote better products than apple. 
another point to add, jaws offer good accessibility in about all programs of windows. right?

Well said cx2. Everyone has their own preferences, and may use 1 screen reader for something and use the other for something, but I don't disrespect that. Like I said, I am a jaws user myself, and have been for about 11 years. I don't see myself switching to nvda anytime soon, because jaws does what I need just fine.

Afrim, to be honest trying to say one screen reader is better than another isn't the point, nor personal preference the be all to end all when it comes to screen reader choice. I think the important thing, which has been overlooked in the prior posts, is weather or not a certain screen reader will meet the end users personal needs.

For example, let's just say for argument's sake that Jaws is the absolutely best screen reader ever developed. I don't happen to agree with that point of view, but let's assume it is true for argument's sake. What good would it do me if I can't afford it. I am frankly speaking flat broke right now, can't afford a $1,000 screen reader, so no matter how good Jaws might be it doesn't meet my needs. What I need right now is an affordable, low cost, screen reader that costs less.

As it happens there is such a screen reader called NVDA. it is basically free unless I wish to donate. It allows me to have decent access to things like Firefox for internet, to Thunderbird for e-mail, I can use all the stock Windows apps like Notepad, as well as a few specialty apps like Goldwave for sound editing, and Visual Studio 2010 for programming. In short, it does everything I need it to do for far less than Jaws so it meets my personal needs. From a practicality point of view I don't see how paying $1,000 for Jaws would really improve my over all end user experience.

First of all, Eloquence has never been my favorite synthesizer. So while Jaws would supply Eloquence as part of the screen reader I would not consider that to be any great advantage. I'm personally okay with Espeak since I use it both on Windows and Linux, and I have a license for the Vocalizer voices for NVDA so I can do without Eloquence.

Second, the Vocalizer voices. No matter what I do I'd have to pay for them. Its just with jaws the cost for the Vocalizer voices are bundled up in the $1,000 you pay for the screen reader with NVDA the $99 license is separate. Either way, if I want those voices I have to pay for them, and I already have a license for Vocalizer for NVDA. So Once again Jaws offers me no real advantages as far as voices goes.

Third, Jaws and NVDA both offer scripting. Jaws has its own proprietary scripting language where NVDA uses Python. So regardless of which screen reader I choose I still have the option to write scripts, modules, and to extend the functionality of the screen reader to have better support for applications as need be.

Fourth, one of Jaws's big features is the Research It ability. While I can see someone out there possibly getting use out of it that someone isn't me. I have no need for such a feature so if I paid for Jaws 16 I'd essentially be paying for extra features I simply do not need.

I could probably go on siting features I wouldn't need or wouldn't use, but the point here is NVDA meets my needs. It doesn't matter if the screen reader is better or worse than Jaws in some real or tangible way. The only thing that matters if it meets my needs which it does. So the next time we get into a debate like this do try to remember that better or worse is largely subjective and often is based on the person's wants and needs rather than how much money was spent developing said product.

Hi.
@Afrim.
What do you mean buy, do you really know the grammar and quality of these synthesizers? Grammar has nothing to do with any speech symth.
Personally I can use ESpeek or elquince. I find that E speek sound nicer in some ways, sometimes. While I find eliquence works good for others. It's all to do with what you like.

saying that, I'm king of worried that when I teach NVDA basics to the staff in the college, they're going to hate the voices. But we will see.