[Monique]

I'm considering buying some speech recognition software like Naturally Speaking. I have a friend who loves it, but I'm skeptical. I know the software is much more advanced than the last time I tried it, but still...

Does anyone here use it? If so, what do you recommend?

Danke!

 

[G. Henkel]

I tried DragonSpeak a little while ago and deleted it after 30 minutes. Despite all the claims, the software was utterly unable to properly decypher even the most basic words. I thought about using it to dictate some of my books instead of writing them, but the software was not even close to being able to do that. I'd spend more time fixing all the errors the software created than actually writing my stuff from scratch.

I've been trying these kinds of software every couple of years but the progress in that field has been negligible and the software is still as poor as it used to be 15 years ago. Nice gimmick but completely unusable in real-life situations.

 

[bluetiger1941]

Windows 7 has speech to text software - I've tried it and would rather just type.

 

[swolf]

I've tried it and would rather just type.

Yeah, I think it would be a whole different experience of writing. I guess it's something you'd have to relearn, but I think it would be tough to do.

 

[Monique]

That's exactly my fear, Guido. Too good to be true.

I didn't know that, George. I'll play with it, but I'm pretty sure it's not up to the task.

Thanks so much for the replies.

 

[BrentNichols]

I use Dragon.  It can be aggravating, but overall I find it about as fast and easy as typing.  We've all had the experience of using the backspace key over and over for one pesky word that the fingers just refuse to type correctly.  Dragon is like that.  I have to correct a word in almost every sentence, but that happens when I type, too.

 

[Carl246]

I'm considering buying some speech recognition software like Naturally Speaking. I have a friend who loves it, but I'm skeptical. I know the software is much more advanced than the last time I tried it, but still...

Does anyone here use it? If so, what do you recommend?

Danke!

I would highly recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking. I have it and as long as you are prepared to train the software with your voice (which has to be said is time consuming) you won't regret it. Having said all that the technology isn't perfect but is getting better all the time.

Carl

 

[Guest]

I tried IBM ViaVoice a while ago. It wasn't bad but even with all the samples read in, it made a lot of mistakes. I gave up because it was faster to type.

 

[Chad Winters]

i use it for medical dictation. The hard part is that when it messes up it puts in a real word, just not the right one. You can't scan or spell check for typos, you have to check each line for a wrong word

 

[G. Henkel]

The hard part is that when it messes up it puts in a real word, just not the right one. You can't scan or spell check for typos, you have to check each line for a wrong word

That's a good point that made it completely useless for me, too. Because I would later read whatever output DragonSpeech created and I wasn't even able to figure out what I was originally saying. It would just insert words in there that had absolutely nothing to do with what I dictated and it was hard to actually go back and try to remember what should have been there. all in all I found it just a colossal waste of time.

 

[Emeline Danvers]

I've heard the same thing Carl said...that you have to "train" it for a while before it works right.  I've heard it comes in handy when you're not feeling well enough to sit poised at a computer.  But if you're healthy, I can't imagine any benefit, unless you're a horribly slow typist.