If you like the sounds of your own voice - this is for you!
Written: Sep 07 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cool software that does it's job pretty well.
Cons: Sometimes frustrating to use, and tends to make lots of errors when first used
The Bottom Line: An excellent, if sometimes frustrating, introduction to voice recognition. It works well most of the time and can be used with almost any software in place of keyboard input.
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| za9ra22's Full Review: Dragon Systems Dragon NaturallySpeaking Standard 5... |
Dragon NarurallySpeaking is voice recognition software, and unlike previous versions, this one actually works. Well, most of the time. The rest of the time it can be anything from entertaining, to totally frustrating.
First the practical stuff: To run this software comfortably, you'll likely need a fairly fast Pentium III or better, and a lot of memory. It will run on lesser systems, but seem agonisingly slow. It also needs a decent sound card for the microphone input as well.
Installation and the initial training are fairly simple, easy to accomplish and don't take a lot of time, so I'll cut to the chase and report what the software is like to use.
I was tempted to use it to dictate this review, but that wouldn't tell you much because in use I found it 95%+ accurate. What that doesn't convey is the sometimes total and exasperating frustration of the other 5% when it gets things wrong!!
Those who ever used an Apple Newton will know exactly what I mean, and maybe any system that converts a highly variable human input into machine-consistent text is bound to have it's problems, but when Dragon NarurallySpeaking gets things wrong, the errors are either very easy to correct, or you find yourself at the start of a long chain of mistakes where it seems like every word but the right one is offered as a choice.
When correcting an error, the incorrect word is selected and the first step is to see if the right word is on the list provided by the software. With surprising frequency it is. If not, the correct word can be spelled out and the software can be trained to recognize it in future. All very neat and over time it means that accuracy will gradually improve. All selections, commands and corrections can be performed by voice too.... which is often where the frustration creeps in, because it's all too easy to discover that the software doesn't just get the dictation wrong, but the commands and corrections too!
Over time, most users will find that recognition accuracy improves to the point that this software becomes a real joy to use. As a sufferer of CTS/RSI, I found it invaluable for getting large volumes of text into my word processor, though at first it took far longer to dictate text than to type it. The trick is to speak naturally in entire sentences and to stick with it while the system learns.
The software comes complete with a neat notepad application that I'd recommend users stick to in the early stages because this provides a lot of direct and useful help in training the system. After that, as long as the 'Dragon Taskbar' is on-screen, voice recognition can be used in almost any software where text input from the keyboard is required - it works extremely well with Word and Wordperfect, with Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora.
The software supports US, British, Australian, Indian and Asian accents, though as a Brit, I found I got pretty reasonable results after half an hour training it as a US-English speaker by mistake!
I like this software a whole lot. It certainly can be very frustrating to use at times, even after it's been trained for a while, and it can seem to take ages to 'type' documents that could previously be rattled in in a short space of time. But for those who are two-finger amateur typists, who are prone to typing mistakes, have Carpal Tunnel or some other disability that hinders keyboard or mouse input, this is by far the neatest, most elegant and reliable voice recognition software that I've found.
I'm lucky that my copy was bundled with the computer I bought, so it cost nothing. But it allowed me to retire my fairly expensive copy of Via Voice, which had never been quite good enough to use seriously. Dragon NaturallySpeaking v5 is certainly good enough, but I'd recommend that any new user keep their hands tied behind their backs for the first couple of days to prevent them hurling the computer out the window!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
za9ra22
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Member: Andy
Location: Virginia USA
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 2 members
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