As far as vmware fusion is concerned for windows xp, you should need no sighted help. You do the preliminary setup with voiceover, pop in the cd, come back in an hour and a half or so. the only thing you have to do without sound is enter your password if you have one and press enter; if you don't have a password I think it may start up by itself. then you hear the xp startup music. Then you use voiceover and go into the menus and tell it to install or update vmware tools; there will be a warning dialog but that's voiceover accessible. Wait a few minutes and restart the computer, as "cancel vmware tools installation" in the menus won't go away until you reboot. Once you reboot, either put in your screenreader installation cd or at least start up narrator and you have sound. If you don't have sound, you'll know because you won't hear the xp startup music; in that case explore the window with voiceover and see if your speakers and sound are connected. This all refers to vmware fusion. What I would like still to do is have a vmware fusion installation of debian linux also. Unfortunately there's not an automatic install for that, and the prepared virtual machines I've found appear to be netinst or some kind of installers rather than prepared debian, plus I'd have to get speakup or brltty working to access the installation. If anybody ever manages to do this on the Mac, please let me know. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
