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Review: Dragon NaturallySpeaking lets you take your hands off the keyboard |
January 15, 2013
When Gene Roddenberry first came up with Star Trek in 1964, having the ship's computer understand natural speech was an obvious choice—after all, the series was about the far future. Teleporting isn't quite here yet, but speech recognition very much is. Dragon NaturallySpeaking, now in version 12 ($200, buy only), is one of the veteran products in this category. Though it's pricey, it remains the best speech-to-text program for Windows.
$200 is a good-sized chunk of change, especially for a program that doesn't have a trial version. What's more, productively using speech recognition requires more than just software: You need a decent microphone, a quiet environment where nobody minds you talking to yourself, and a different state of mind than when composing text using a keyboard. The good news is that if you're just curious about speech recognition and want to try it out, it's probably built into your system: Starting with Windows Vista, every version of Windows includes a speech recognition feature. This also means Dragon faces stiff competition: $200 with no trial, vs. a free option that's already installed on your computer.
To compare the two, I took a paragraph from the Wikipedia entry about Alice in Wonderland and tried dictating it using both products. It wasn't a very scientific experiment, but I did use the same text, computer, microphone, and environment. Dragon's rendition was noticeably better, but both results were far from perfect, mainly because the paragraph contained several proper names. Still, the results indicate that Windows speech recognition is definitely usable, especially if you just want to evaluate if speech recognition makes your work any faster or easier.
Dragon's slim toolbar can dock to any application window, as long as you don't try to move the application to a secondary monitor.
The added value Dragon offers over Windows speech recognition comes in two forms: Quality of recognition, and extra features. Disregarding the single-paragraph test, I found Dragon's recognition excellent, especially for general prose. I was able to dictate a lengthy email without having to correct many errors, using my natural voice and without having to enunciate or speak any differently than I would to another person. In other words, Dragon's core functionality feels mature and field-tested, and it does work.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2025295/review-dragon-naturallyspeaking-lets-you-take-your-hands-off-the-keyboard.html
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