Orca confused on orca accessibility with forms and text in web pages.

["krishnakant Mane" <researchbase gmail com>]

hello all,
I am planning to install ubuntu 6.10 on my compaq nx 7300 laptop in a
couple of days.
I have one major question and one small one about current status of orca.
firstly, my major doubt is if orca is using some other way of browsing
the web other than vertual buffer?  I have been using jaws and windows
for last 4 years and my web accessibility on linux has been only
through emacspeak, which is very limited as every one knows.
I want to know if orca uses the vertual buffer and the forms mode.  I
am more comfortable with this concept because of jaws and if orca is
using some alternative (and better) way of web accessibility, then
please let me know what reading should I do before installing ubuntu.
by the way another question is that after installing ubuntu 6.10 I
want the latest firefox and latest orca.  I know there are nightly
builds but don't know if they will work with ubuntu 6.10 or not.
I also want to know which latest office version is working most
accessibally on ubuntu 6.10 so that I can download it as well.
the minar question is that if E Speak will be better than festival for
orca?  I don't mind the mechanical speach of ESpeak because it is very
fast in response as compared to festival.
Please answer my doubts so that I can make a smooth migrate.
I had mentioned some time back that I am helping one of the states
here in India to migrate to linux and so blind people do ask all these
questions.
if all things are working well then I may as well setup an entire lab
with 50 ubuntu machines.
regards.
Krishnakant.