Dragon Naturally Speaking

[NightOwl]

Has anybody had any experience of using Dragon Naturally Speaking? At the moment I'm having to write things out in long hand and take them to my husband to help me with my grammar and spelling, this takes me quite some time. I've been told I've got a very good brain but there is some form of probably dyslexia. I can read perfectly and use all the facilities on the computer, this helps me a lot.

I've just got the Dragon package and just starting to train up my computer. This will help me immensely with my studies and also I write articles and am starting to write a book with the help of a journalist friend. Any comments would be appreciated if you've used this package before :dimples:

NightOwl

 

[Halo]

Hi NightOwl,

I actually didn't know what Dragon Naturally Speaking was until I looked it up and here is what the description is (for others who don't know either)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the speech recognition software package produced by Nuance Communications for Windows PCs.

Obviously never having heard of it, I have never used it but I would be interested to find out what your opinion and thoughts are when you try it.

Good luck

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I've had a few clients who have used it. It seems to do a pretty good job once you "train" it.

 

[NightOwl]

Thank you for your comments. I've now pretty well trained my Dragon Naturally Speaking package and absolutely love it. It takes quite a few hours of dedication to train it and it tends to strain the vocal chords slightly - I was just getting over flu at the time of training it, so tended to stress my voice slightly. I can highly recommend it. :dimples:

I have a Swedish friend that also uses this and he likes it also but has said his accent was a slight problem with it originally. You need to speak very precisely to train it up but once having done that, it understands you.

NightOwl
PS Remember not to cus in front of it, it will write it on the screen. I've now learned my lesson! :confidential:

 

[Halo]

Nightowl,

I am glad to hear that you really love the program and that it seems to be working well for you.

I thought it was funny about cussing in front of it because I would have never thought of that :lol: Glad you learned your lesson

 

[David Baxter PhD]

When Windows XP was first released, it came with its limited form of voice recognition enabled by default. Suddenly, a lot of people using Microsoft Word were complaining about Word typing things all by itself. It turned out to be typing what they were saying, of course, but in the meantime there were a lot of seriously freaked out people with possessed keyboards.

 

[NightOwl]

I've heard of people having problems from earlier versions but I've got Version 9.00 and it is working really well. I just have to remind myself when I am writing to the Bank manager or any official letter to check it first before I send it off.

NightOwl

 

[Retired]

I tried using an earlier version a couple of years ago, and at that time found it to be too complicated to provide me any benefit over typing.

If the interface has been simplified, then it could be a useful tool, but as I recall it required a lot of hard disk space.

Also the training was very long and tedious, but if voice recognition has a benefit then it's worth the time investment.

 

[Daniel E.]

By the way, I'm using Window Vista's speech recognition for it's voice command features, especially for browsing the web, and I love it. I started only a few days ago after getting wrist discomfort from overusing my trackball mouse. In some cases, the voice commands (for browsing the web, starting applications, using application menus, etc.) are faster than using a mouse.