Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Review
Who needs a keyboard, anyway? Get yourself a headset mic and some Dragon Dictate software, and you can be writing documents and emails without having to be an expert typist. Pete reviews NatuallySpeaking
Hands-off with Natually Speaking Review:
On this page, we will be reviewing Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10. Rather than typing this review, the review will be dictated to a PC using NaturallySpeaking.
Installing Naturally Speaking
Assuming you have bought yourself the boxed version of Dragon Naturally Speaking, the first thing to do is install the software. They remind though, installation is not a particularly quick process. First of all, after running the installer and entering the supplied serial number, we found it best to select the custom installation. This enables you to remove some of the unnecessary files from your installation, in our case the US English and Indian English variants. As part of the installation process, we were instructed to install a new version of Visual C++, which requires a reboot.
The software installation completes, and the application next goes online to check the software updates. When we installed the software, we were prompted to install a rather hefty service Pack. After installation is complete the first step is a microphone test. For this you required to speak a short piece of text or a package of lines itself to your microphone volume. A brief audio quality check is also performed. Next comes a user setup and training.
After creating a user account on a your instructed to read a short piece of text into the computer to allow it to train your voice. In order for the software to learn your voice, short extract the text displayed on screen for you to read. Bear in mind this process can take around five minutes.
Once what training is complete, Dragon NaturallySpeaking asks you whether it is okay to scan some of your computer software on our installation we were prompted to scan Outlook and documents folder. This allows the software to learn your writing style when we tried this it also identified a small collection of words are common to us and added those to the built-in dictionary.
The whole installation process took around 30 minutes, which is a little longer than expected from a standard software installation. Of course, the software is also a lot more clever than many standard software packages.
Using Dragon Dictate NaturallySpeaking
With the software installed, and trained for use, extend time to put the dictation to the test. In fact, that's what we're doing now. This is the first document that we have created using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and we intend to publish this as is. This article won't be spell checked, and all that we will be doing is adding some basic formatting to make it more web friendly.
Dictating is fairly straightforward. It's a case of starting up the application, which loads the Dragon bar. Then, we opened Microsoft Word, clicked the microphone icon on Dragon bar, and started talking. As I'm speaking now, I consider words being added to the screen very quickly, and the accuracy is surprisingly good. I used a version of Dragon number of years ago, and although was generally impressed, the speed of recognition, and in many cases the accuracy, was acceptable but not wonderful.
Dragon Dictate Dragon Bar
Using NaturallySpeaking version 10, I am very impressed with the speed and accuracy. The dictation, and indeed for writing articles on the Internet, this is the first time I've used were considered to be a generally accurate solution. Looking at the previous sentence, I can see that a small mistake has been made. The phrase used "were considered" should be "what I consider", but perhaps that's my slightly lazy diction.
Naturally Speaking In Action
Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Availability:
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Summary
So far, and I only been using this package provider six minutes, I'm very impressed and can certainly see some true potential for this. Shortly, I will be trying a more radical experiment, by feeding Dragon NaturallySpeaking with one of old pod casts to see how it copes. End of dictation
To see how it did, we fed it Show 52 (complete with music). Have a listen to the audio, and read along with the transcript, to see what sort of job Naturally speaking makes of transcribing a podcast:
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Audio from FrequencyCast Show 52
Here's what NaturallySpeaking Made of Show 52:Free cast, I card number to an online digital TV, a technology show, the show is based on feedback from you and I'll add you. Are d8 are egged on technology problems were the first to bring new HD DVR shed a few pounds this summer with an online, cashing your old FM radio that has ravaged the another way of removing arms for your keyboard's on the division and I not to launch their HD service on free you. Talking of five, the TV stations up the sale owners RTL and looking for a buyer possible bidders include sky ITV and Big Brother's end, and I'll have a look for it on eBay next some Apple news. Amazing demand for the iPAQ continues as at all reports over 2 million iPods have been sold in just 60 days. Watch this space for news of a new 4G iPhone, which is expected to be announced by Apple's Steve jobs at the start of the worldwide developer conference on Monday, 7 June. Some 3view HD News now. We've heard from owners of the Philips DTR 552 and 3view HD boxes reporting there are quite a number of nasty bugs and over the air bug fix is expected in the next few days. Also note that the first 3view HD recorder is now out of the Philips HD T8520. 500 gig drive off quiet and under £300 links on our show is another quick snippets of the BBC has just launched an updated version of their iPod with the ability to share content via Facebook and twitter Google has just announced they are about to enter the TV market to expect to see a Google TV set-top box powered by android and made by Logitech coming soon, virgin media is about to relaunch their new and improved karaoke channel on their on demand service stop singing From this, it's clear that it's not great for transcribing a podcast - hardly surprising, as we left the music and jingles in - but in a few places, it didn't do a bad job. You'll be pleased to know that we'll continue to use the services of the excellent Typing Angels for our podcast transcripts - sometimes the human touch can't be beaten! |
Related Pages
- Review of the Olympus VN8500 Voice Recorder (which uses Dragon Dictate software)
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