[nfbcs] How well does JAWS and Windows Server 2012 work together

[Graham Mehl]

Hi All,

On my new project I have to stand up a development Virtual Machine (VM).
Most of the developers are using CentOS Linux. All test and production
servers are CentOS Linux, except one that is a windows server 2008 VM to
perform OCR tasks. I have a choice of OS to be my development machine. They
are Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, or CentOS Linux.
Most of my life I have developed on Red Hat or CentOS VMs when I still had
some vision. As I mentioned this development machine is a virtual machine,
so I have no choice, but to connect to it remotely. The local machine is
Windows XP (yeah, I know way out dated and no longer supported). And no I
don't have any way to get a more up to date OS at my desk, because it is a
thin client environment. I have been told the thin clients will be upgraded
to windows 7 within the next 7 months. Since the VM is remote, I cannot use
ORCA. So that leaves me with JAWS. And JAWS does support the ability to send
an audio stream between to windows machines running JAWS.  So since Windows
Server was the recommended OS by my System Admin. I decided to go with
Windows Server 2012 not realizing it had a Windows 8 desktop look and feel.
I have never used Windows 8 or an OS with the touch screen look and feel.
For the last 4 years or so I have used professionally and personally Windows
7. I should add I am essentially a newbie with JAWS. For now, I essentially
will have to use Java 8 and eclipse luna. So my question is what is your
recommendation, should I use Windows Server 2012 or Windows 7 on my
development VM? Does JAWS work well on Windows Server 2012?

-- Graham Mehl