newbie questions

[Nicolas Graner <nicolas.graner@u-psud.fr>]

Hello all,

I just joined this list because I am considering switching to Debian as
my main OS (currently running Windows and cygwin). Being visually
impaired, I need both full screen magnification and speech output in
French and English.

I have two questions at the moment:

1) are there good quality French voices available for free or not too
expensive? Which screen readers can use them?

2) how much RAM would you recommend to run GNOME and Orca comfortably on
a laptop? My vendor says 3 GB is plenty, can you confirm this?

Thanks for your help. I will probably have more questions later :)

Nicolas