[orca-list] Another newby, with some questions

["JM & Angel" <crystallogic ca inter net>]

Hello everyone,

I've been lurking on the list for a few weeks now, reading some of the 
comments, questions and so on as I try and get going with Linux. I'm pretty 
new to the operating system, having used it a little remotely from a shell 
in the 90s and learning a lot of basic file manipulation stuff along with 
the usual Internet programmes. I'm using Windows for most things now, and 
have wanted to get a machine and run Linux on it for a long time, so I could 
tinker and learn the OS; maybe even ditch Microsoft for the most part if I 
find that Linux works well for me.

A really helpful and knowledgeable person got me a nice refurbished machine 
and installed Ubuntu 8.04 on it for me. She successfully got Orca running in 
the Gnome desktop, but after playing around with it for a while I noticed 
that the screenreader seemed very sluggish and unresponsive. I upgraded to 
512 MB of ram from 256, thinking this might improve things, and while the OS 
runs quicker in general I still find Orca almost excruciating to use. One 
odd and possibly related thing I've noticed is that even though I have both 
key and word echo turned off, if I'm typing a document or even entering an 
URL, Orca seems to be trying to keep up with my keystrokes. It never speaks 
until I've typed several characters, at which point it spits out some 
slightly garbled version of what I've typed so far. At first I thought it 
was some weird software quirk, but I think, after typing a lot more and 
being quite distracted by this, that it can't be normal behaviour.

I'm using the Espeak synthesiser at the moment .. definitely far from wild 
about it and I might be obtaining a Dectalk Express synth soon to make this 
just a little bit more manageable. Another thing I noticed is that Orca 
seems to "flake out" at seemingly random times without any justification. I 
might be browsing a page in firefox, or even in the terminal, or my partner 
might hit one of the mouse buttons to do something quickly, and orcca just 
freezes. The process still runs, but there's simply no speech. In order to 
get it working again I have to quit Orca and restart it (it will let me quit 
and doesn't have to be killed).

I know that this isn't much to go on really, but the sluggishness in 
particular has kept me from really tinkering with my new box as much as I'd 
like. I have a lot to learn and right now am reading about Linux on the 
windows computer because it's so much faster and more responsive! I guess at 
this point I am just wondering if anybody has any ideas or suggestions for 
me. I've looked at the Orca FAQ, but I'm afraid I'm still at a loss. It 
can't really be this slow for everyone can it?

Regards,
JM