Comments on: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Review

By: Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:01:21 +0000

Glad you found it useful, Jacqueline.

By: Jacqueline

Jacqueline — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:00:22 +0000

Thanks for the review. You covered many things, I hope the MAC version works just as well as the PC will give it a test run.

By: Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:17:32 +0000

Dragon’s definitely come a long way, Karilee. I can see myself using it more and more in the weeks to come. I will need to train it on stuff like company names I refer to often and then it will be pretty near perfect.

By: Karilee

Karilee — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:44:28 +0000

Thanks for the update, Sharon. It's been at least a decade since I've tried Dragon. It sounds like it may be time to give it another spin. Even in the mid-90's it was usable, but at that point it was generally too finicky unless you had carpal tunnel and HAD to use it. If I remember right, at that time it also had (trained) about a 5% error rate, which would have been 40 errors in your 800 word post. So it sounds like it's come a long way. I remember one of my clients loving it back then though. He worked for a (Canadian) Federal government department that shall best remain unnamed. He used to use Dragon for creating funding requests, which were generally granted according to word volume - nobody ever actually read them except for the summary page. He adored this software, even then! .-= Karilee´s last blog ..Three Words For The New Year =-.

By: Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:51:51 +0000

I think there are a lot of factors that can affect your experience of Dragon, George (background noise, whether you can speak quickly and clearly, your audio setup), but compared with the version I tried ten years ago, this one made it easy to create the post. I’ll be testing it more thoroughly this week.

By: Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:49:24 +0000

I’ve been very impressed, James. I’ll know more about how robust it is when I’ve done a week’s work using it (that’s this week’s test), but out of the box it’s a much improved product.

By: George Angus

George Angus — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:50:16 +0000

Hi Sharon,

I had read reviews last year that were less than stellar about this. I am intrigued though. It sounds like something for me to put on my wish list in the new year.

You actually did this whole post using it? Pretty cool!

George
.-= George Angus´s last blog ..Okay, I’ve Written A Life List =-.

By: James NomadRip

James NomadRip — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:59:39 +0000

Thanks for this review, Sharon. I also tried it fairly unsuccessfully in the 90's. It worked well enough, but not for what I needed it to do. I think much faster than I can type, but before I was not writing anything of substance and trying to use it to run my whole computer. A friend gave me a new copy of the program and headset a few months back, and I had been thinking of trying it out for writing. .-= James NomadRip´s last blog ..Crush It! Work Your Face Off with Gary Vaynerchuk =-.

By: Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:40:07 +0000

Hi Jeanne

It doesn’t look like they do a Mac version, so you might have to go for MacSpeech Dictate, which I’m told uses the Dragon engine and is pretty similar in functionality.

I think the trick is to train it in the conditions you’ll be using it in. I tend to get background noise from the wind blowing, but so far that hasn’t affected recognition as I made sure to keep the window open when training the software.

By: soultravelers3

soultravelers3 — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:27:27 +0000

Thanks for this! Do you have any information about the Mac version? I’m seriously thinking about getting it as finishing my book with my injured ( and slow healing) right arm is too challenging.

I hope some of your readers have tried the Mac version. We have a PC laptop too, but I much prefer to work on my macbook.

We work often in tight quarters with a bouncing & loud kid around, so wondering how other sounds affect things or how hard it will be for others if I’m speaking everything?

When one of us is on a skype call, it’s pretty hard for the others to concentrate. Will it be the same?

Is there any place to demo this product online. I’m in Spain, so not like it’s easy to send back if it’s not the right product for us.

Thanks!
.-= soultravelers3´s last blog ..Happy New Year, Nochevieja from Spain! =-.