I am not able to give you an objective view here, just my experiences.
Coming from a Mac/Unix environment myself I would say NVDA does a good job with standard office applications. Of course, if you want to play it safe and you have
the financial possibilities, update your Jaws to the newest version before starting your studies. After all, you never know if you will encounter a software that doesn’t work with NvDA and works with Jaws. Personally, I subscribe to the view that it’s always
good to have more than one screen reader installed just in case something is not as accessible as you would like it.
As to your original question though, if you are pretty sure that you will be using standard software and you are considering if you really need Jaws to survive
in the computer age, my personal answer is no.
