Flutterby™! : Voice recognition? 2001-11-05 15:44:22+00

Voice recognition?

2001-11-05 15:44:22+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Hey, Charlene wants a voice recognition system. I think Kiki uses Dragon's NaturallySpeaking. Anyone out there got experiences?

I've been using Dragon NatSpeak Preferred on a succession of PCs since 1998 for many books and articles, and I've found that it's more than capable enough for my needs. In fact, because I'm not a very good typist, I've even had an increase in my output.

I've also discovered that there are many people who try to use the programs, and fail because they don't train the software properly. Yet there's plenty of good info on how to do it right, from the manufacturer's instructions to many Web sites. Given that I've done it, and lots of people I know and trust have also managed to get VR working just fine, I conclude that if VR doesn't work for a given person, it probably isn't the software's fault. Certainly the software could be better; but it's very usable as is. I wouldn't recommend it for people doing heavy code books, but for things like Visual Quickstart Guides, or Dummies books (both of which I've written with VR), VR works just fine for me. Of course, it's also fine for general text, not just compuer books.

Naturally Speaking is probably the best of a bad lot. A friend who has severe carpal tunnel in both wrists depends on it daily; he tried four or five programs heavily before settling on that as the only one which would do what he wanted it to do.

Debby and I also tracked it fairly closely because we kept hoping Dragon would put out a Mac version (also because for a long time I had a regular journal reader who worked for them - an inside source, as it were).

Unfortunately they were one of the last ships that Lernout and Hauspie (did I spell that right?) plundered before they themselves went down in flames, and I'm not sure what the future holds even for the Windows version at this point.