I’ve been considering this so I can dictate my freelance work and blogging rather than typing it. Voice recognition algorythms have their quirks, but I haven’t been keeping up with it much in the past several years and have no idea how much it may have improved.
I am a competant typist and realize that much of the time spent in my work is composition, editing and research. So, I have realistic expectations that typing speed is a bottleneck which if removed should have a substantial, though not transformative impact.
Also, though I’ve lived in the South for my whole life and am of Acadian descent, my family has spoken English for generations (I don’t even know much French and that I know is Parisian, not Creole) and I have a neglible accent. I know that accents can play havoc with voice recog.
I was really considering buying the basic package for $80. The advanced packages allow for control of opening/closing applications and controlling the OS, but I don’t need/want any of that. I just want this for producing large blocks of text. Now, I’ve found it for $40, so I’m almost sold. But, I wanted to elicit an aggregate opinion from the teeming masses before making the buy. Anyone . . . anyone . . . Bueller?
I’m using version ten right now and have used every version from seven on. It’s pretty decent. I’d peg recognition to be between 90 and 95%, and I’ve got it to transcribe 40 words a minute, but I think it’s capable to doing it faster than that.
But I’m sure you’d like to know what’s not to love about it too.
The problems I have with version ten are:
it often doesn’t catch the first word in a sentence, so if you say “I went to bed” it types “Went to bed.”
it guesses at pronouns for no discernable reasons (there’s no way “she” and “they” sound alike no matter what your accent is.) Word endings and tenses can be a problem the same way too, so you need to double check past tenses and plurals.
it does have problems with accents to a small degree. I can’t get it to understand the words “calm” or “scrutinizing,” for example. However, before you ever have it type a document for you, you train it to your voice so it will learn to understand what you’re saying…for the most part.
it’s bizarrely insistent upon capitalizing words like Windows.
That’s about it for problems. It’s certainly quicker to fix the minor errors than type things out.
If I were you, I’d look for the “standard” version vs the cheaper “essentials” one. The new version comes out next month, so if you’re willing to hold off 2-3 weeks, you can probably get a good deal on version 10 on ebay or though amazon marketplace real soon. You need a good microphone for it to be really accurate, and I recommend this one (do buy the extension cable someone in the comments recommends, I needed it within 2 months - you can get one on amazon for $3 including shipping). It’s a very good knock off of a microphone that costs 10x that price.
I’ve been using it for years, though it’s only recently that it’s become properly usable in the sense that it doesn’t make too many mistakes. In fact I’d say that the accuracy is now very good indeed. I’m dictating this now, and it’s far, far faster than I could possibly type. (But then I’m not a very good typist).
I’m using the latest version – version 11 – which I got last week. To be honest, I can’t see many differences from the previous version. There are three main versions now: Home, Premium and Professional. There are also specialist versions; for example, for medical use.
I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it; it’s very fast and very accurate. It does have some oddities; for example, it refuses to type the word tap (I have had to type that in manually), but I’d say – go for it. Just check that you can exceed the minimum system requirements; if you only just meet them, you’ll get bottlenecks.
I use it constantly and couldn’t work at nearly the same efficiency without it. I do have some of the problems listed above, but once you are used to them, it becomes a small issue because you compensate or quickly correct.
It definitely works better when you talk at a reasonable pace, not in single words. For my doctorate, I summarize references as I go directly into Dragon. That means I can search for anything easily, and cut and paste into the thesis and papers. At well over 400 references, that is invaluable. As an author, I intend to get a number of books out of this research, so will benefit from having it all electronically for a long time.
I am often astounded at the words she does know (yes, I have given her a name and personality), and use the teaching tool regularly so she picks up technical words. And some of the words she puts in when she misunderstands can be hilarious. A good laugh is always worth it!
Thanks for the input, all! (See, “all” not “y’all”, I told you I had no accent! ; )) I really don’t think $40 bucks is too much to take a gamble on, just a couple of assignments. But, I am appreciative of your contributions. I really was looking for the negatives, as it’s easy to find the producers’/retailers’ talking-up of the good points. Thanks for mentioning system reqs, I’m not running a top-end system, though it’s not a relic either, but I will check.
Just to add that you say you are planning to buy one for $40. I’d say that it only really became sensibly usable with v10 - which I see has sold on eBay for that sort of sum.
My sister-in-law is a quadrapalegic and uses Dragon exclusively for everything on her computer - web browsing, creating documents, email, etc. It’s practically a lifeline. She’s been using it since version 4 or 5 I believe.
It works very well for her, although she speaks slowly with no background noise. It seems to me that typing would be faster but obviously she doesn’t have that option. Since she can’t speak quickly anyway, I can’t really comment on how well it can keep up with a moderate or fast speaker.
I do know that after a while, it gets very good at recognizing accents, but you have to spend some upfront time training it to understand you.
Thank you all for your input concerning Dragon voice recognition software. I went ahead and made the purchase, in fact I’m dictating now. Despite your admonitions to keep an eye on system requirements, I somehow managed to forget to note my system specifications before going to the store. However, with some creative quick thinking, I noted that the store also sold Starcraft 2. Since my system runs StarCraft 2, and it operates well with that program, I compared it to the system requirements for Dragon. StarCraft 2 is far more demanding of the system than Dragon is. So I felt confident that my system was more than capable.
It took a while to install and train, and it does take some getting used to. But, I am generally pleased with his performance and will start work on my freelance assignments and blogging, utilizing the program tonight.
So, did you really say his performance, or its? I ask, because I’m curious if it does a better job on pronouns for other people, or not too many people feel it’s worth complaining about.
I don’t have trouble with pronouns, but I have no luck at all getting her to write ‘are’ and ‘art’ or even ‘R’ in spelling mode. Must be my accent (Australian). And ‘the’ has to be soft, not said as ‘theee’.
I am intrigued by the algorithms, though. She is pretty good at getting ‘too’ and ‘to’ correct, and other such stuff. Or is that my imagination?
I bought Dragon when I messed up a tendon on my left hand a few years back. It made MSNing kinda neat. But my netbook has a dinky microphone, and I don’t like having to wear the switchboard operator’s headset it comes with. Also, it didn’t seem to handle jargon specific words in my papers too well. Finally, the correcting function seldom seemed to work; if it butchered a word, it didn’t like the way I would say the mispronounced word, and so it wouldn’t know what word to select to correct.
Although it spews out words really fast, the fact that it a) messes up words oblivious to you, and b) forces you to say the punctuation, which is really counter-intuitive for me, made it a disappointing investment. Fortunately my hand is healed up, and unless I’m in a real bind, I will not use it.
This is a bit late for the OP - for which, I apologise - but I’ve just remembered that Windows Vista and 7 comes with voice recognition, which, when I’ve used it, behaves very much like Dragon, with the added advantage of being free.
I use version 10, and have very good results. But I don’t use it all the time, as I have to launch it and put on the headset. My main use of it is transcribing audio interviews. I play the original audio via headphones, and repeat what I hear. When I get rolling, I only have to stop every couple of paragraphs. I’ve done a lot of the optional training, and I don’t think I can overemphasize how much it helps with accuracy. That, and a good headset - trying to use it with the microphone built in a laptop will result in terrible accuracy.
What results do people get with the factory microphone? My results haven’t been too great and I wonder if I should get a better microphone or perhaps a USB microphone in case the problem is the sound circuitry build into my PC.
Use the recorder application on your computer and record yourself speaking and listen to it. The easier for you to understand it, the easier it will be for the software to understand it. There might be a hum, or the input might be overloaded, or you might be talking too close or too far away from the microphone.
Buying the microphone I recommended up thread improved the accuracy by at least 10%, and that’s over the other two I bought, which themselves were appreciably better than the one that came with it. **A lot **of how well it does has to do with the quality of the microphone.
The iPhone/iPad version is much weaker; I think because of the very low-power CPUs. It’s completely useless for me except as entertainment: “The bog fairy withered?” How did you get that out of “I need new shoes for school Wednesday?”
Even on the computer, though, I find I spend more time correcting than I would have typing in the first place, but I’m a pretty good typist with an unusual accent (I can never get those phone systems where you speak words and numbers to understand me, either, beyond the occasional “yes” and “no.”)