For some reason, it isn't letting me post my whole reply, so I'll start with this until I can get the whole thing in. It's not difficult with dual booting, it just takes getting used to. There are some keyboard differences, especially if you get a Macbook/pro. I'll try to post the whole reply later, or PM it to you for what I had. The error I was getting was "You need to fix errors" but it wouldn't list the errors.

Yeah, I can understand how the price would scare you. I did notice one thing though, apparently the links here for the different topics (general, off topic) don't come across as links in Safari (mac's browser) so unless I find a fix, you would have to post in Windows.

Here is the exact error I get:
The following errors need to be corrected before the message can be posted:

and then it lists no errors. :(Again, I had a bit of a longer reply for you. I am wondering since I am tryign to post longer replies, if it thinks that it's being spammed and not letting me? Anyway, if you go Mac, let me know and I can help you immensely with things that I have learned on my own. HTH

As for booting, when you hit option the "boot" disk is the top of the list. So even if you last booted into Windows, and you have OSX as your boot disk, OSX will be on top and vice versa if you have windows as your boot disk and lastly booted into OSX. As far as I have tried, only Tab works to get to the other OS and then you hit enter. If you happen to have a bootable CD/DVD in, it's always the last in the option (Tab twice if dual booting and want to get into bootable disk, or hold either C or Option C when the drive starts to spin I forget which).

As for helping out, it's what I do and what I like to do. I completely understand how frustrating it can be for a totally blind user to go through this, as you said, there isn't much for help on this topic. Just about everything I learned, I had to do so on my own so there might be easier ways to do things, but the ones I use are all I know. There is one tutorial for Voice Over (but after listening to it and trying things out) I found that it's not totally correct for everything (I'll see if I can find it tomorrow and I'll post it in a reply here). I am a huuuuge proponent of the visually impaired community learning OSX and switching to the Mac. Sure, certain things are different, but most would learn a new OS and screen reader for the convenience of not having to pay up the wazoo for a screen reader, or updates every year. Unfortunately, Microsoft has top dog status in the market and that is what most places use for work. You might also want to look at eBay or Craigslist for the iMac (or even the Mac Pro). They seem to be reasonable priced most of the time (and sometimes even fairly "cheap").

P.S. Another good thing is that you can store your Voice Over settings onto a thumbdrive, plug it into any other mac running at least 10.5 Leopard, and it'll run those settings versus another users settings without messing up the host settings until you take out the thumbdrive.

All very useful to know indeed.

The mac pro is indeed insanely expensive, though what self respecting tech geek wouldn't drool at the thought of 8 cores?

Hi.

Regarding Adium, this is the best messenger client we have right now. Is your Voiceover set to Group mode or Dom mode in the Voiceover Utility? You can't read the messages if it's set to group mode.

Hey,

Don't give up.  You can probably find an accessible mac application for most things with some tenacity.  Developers are also a little more receptive to adding access into their apps, especially if they're developed using cocoa (the Mac's gui builiding stuff).  there are several accounts of helpful developers on macvisionaries.com, aa helpful mailing list to blind switchers.  Blindcooltech also has some more tutorials - one was just posted recently.  Apple also has an accessibility site with info on voiceover (including an audio manual) and lioncourt.com has mac news related to us disabled.

I've never used IRC on the mac (or on any other OS for that matter) but I think I heard some good things about xchat.  You could also try irci from the terminal (google it) but it's a text-only terminal app, so the interface would probably not be so pretty.

Thanks for pointing out lioncourt.com, the article on visiting a mac shop was pretty useful for getting an idea of how to get around the mac at a basic level and how to get into the tutorial. I haven't even touched a mac, but it helped reassure me it won't be as bad as I thought it would be to learn.

Laugh, peer pressure actually has the opposite effect on me usually. I'm deeply suspicious of many things that seem "too popular", often I find they are more marketing than substance. Not so much with software though. I'm just tired of Windows trying to reinvent itself every few years, I want something which actually progresses instead of putting all its effort into wowing people but mostly just moves sideways.

I've considered Linux, but honestly it just seems like too much effort right now laugh. Tried a bootable CD and not being able to have the key commands available on the computer wasa major drawback, I really needed them open in a second computer which wasn't practical at the time for me. The mac having a tutorial hopefully will do that for me.

All this said I won't be joining the ranks until Snow Leopard at the earliest, and I'll be saving up in between.

Give it time. On the one hand the length of time XP was about helped more people gain more confidence with computers without worrying about having to use different versions like the old mish mash, but equally now they are trying to move on to Vista and even Windows 7 people will resent being expected to change to something so different with any frequency.

The way Mac OS versions are called 10.whatever will encourage more people to move to the mac, since it makes it seem like less of a upheaval when they do upgrade if they upgrade. They could well see it as easier to make one big switch to the Mac and stay there. I've been quite technical for some time now, and I've done the whole upgrading through different versions of Windows thing, but now the new versions are less and less backwardly compatible and so on even I don't want to stick with Windows long term.

So at the same time Microsoft gained more people in the computer market with XP, but lost future business with their practice regarding new versions. People want incremental upgrades not overhauls all at once.

Ravager,

Again, don't give up.  I've been using my mac as my main system since the beginning of this year. I haven't used windows at all outside of work (where I have no choice); work meaning working in disabilities office (don't judge).  Games can even partially be played with something like darwine (Super Deekout notably works perfectly) and Textedit handles most document types I need (everyone can read RTF so no problems there).  I use linux on the laptop with openoffice if I need anything beefier (apparently the newest openoffice works with VO, but it runs too slowly on my mac mini).

I've just read about the new model Macs, and I'm not impressed... but not for the reason you think.

The updates seem useful, bread and butter type ones that all companies make sooner or later. The price increases in the UK are silly though, especially given the high price of even low end Macs compared to PCs.

The low ehnd base mac mini went from

Thanks, I'd rather not get in a mess with customs though being in Britain.

Also oddly the standard keyboards no longer seeem to have the numpad, or the extended home/end/etc keys. There is an option to have the extended keyboard, but it's an option at the Apple store so its availibility from resellers seems dubious. Could be a problem for some people who just walk into a shop and want a mac. The extended keyboard also advertises itself as having full size arrow keys, so it sounds like they're smaller on the normal keyboard too.