I'm afraid for me Jaws was never an option simply due to the price.
I used Supernova for years, but when in 2017 it turned out their windows 10 support translated to "supporting those bits of windows 10 we want", and not making any effort to fix the rest, I knew I needed something else. I would have liked to have tried Jaws simply for the sake of having a wider perspective, however with the price of Jaws in the Uk being as stupidly high as what it was, I saw little point in trying the demo. If it had been 50 quid, maybe even a hundred I'd have certainly tried for comparrison but the thousand or so the thing costs? On your bike!
Really, if Freedom scientific want actual people to buy their software, not government organisations, not schools, not agencies (, they need to bloody well drop the price, and when I say drop, I mean really! drop, since hay as narrator and NVdA become more widely known you can bet agencies who are wanting to save cash will be less likely to pay inflated prices.
The fact that we are even having this discussion, proves that from the end user's perspective the decision isn't as clear cut as it appears, and when people are debating the merits of something that costs over a thousand pounds, or heck even a hundred pounds vs something which is free, it should be a no brainer.
imagine if your legs were paralysed and someone said to you, "well you can buy this top of the line electric wheel chair for a thousand pounds, which will go at multiple speeds, which you can operate with a stick, which folds up to be light enough to go in the back of a taxi, or you can crawl around with this walking stick for free. You will need to drag yourself along on knees, and probably get blisters, but it won't cost you anything"
The decision here is pretty obvious, the benefits of paying for the wheel chair over the benefits of not buying a wheel chair and using the free, if vastly inferior option.
Unless Jaws is so much better than the alternatives on offer so as to present that sort of choice, then the price is a serious problem.
Of course I will freely admit I am slightly biased here, since I haven't experienced the issues people mention with NVdA lagging etc, and was even able to finish my PHd with their office support, complex footnotes and layout and all.
I also don't doubt that were I to get a huge pile of money tomorrow and try Jaws there likely would be a thin or two I would find an improvement, but the problem here is not whether Jaws is better than NVdA or narrator, but whether those things Jaws is better at justify the price being charged from the software.
Again this isn't to knock anyone who uses Jaws or suggest that people should stop doing so, heck I used supernova for close to 24 years myself, especially since I was bought a license when i went to university and so just had to pay the odd hundred quid for maintenance upgrades, just to question whether at this time when some bloody good free alternatives are possible the current Jaws pricing structure makes sense, especially from the perspective of potential new users like me.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)