Having gone through this little exercise, I would say that Dragon would do a poor job of transcribing a speech on how to operate Dragon. It would get continually confused over typing out the names of the commands or actually executing the commands. I think there is a way to turn off the command function in some circumstances so this ambiguity is eliminated.
Very interesting stuff. Question - did you get Dragon specifically so you could do this thread, or did you have an ulterior motive? If there is such a motive, how is it working out for you?
-D/a
Oh, man, if only I could afford 200 bucks just to do a thread on it.
No, I got interested when I found out that I could try speech recognition in windows seven for free, and I had very mixed results. But was still better than I expected and I did a little research, and found all kinds of websites giving glowing reviews to Dragon. And I’ve been struggling with writing this book for years now, and just have dribs and drabs completed.
My sister happened to choose that moment to ask what I wanted as a birthday present (my birthday is later this month). So I said, “I want Dragon premium speech recognition software.” So she bought it for me and in five days, I’ve written three chapters of the book, which is more output then I’ve done in like the last five years.
Well, at least your tail isn’t dragon. 
Is the fiery breath a distraction?
I’m picturing you really enunciating clearly as you said this.
As I have often said, it’s a great time to be disabled, compared to any other time in history. My daughter can’t speak well enough for Dragon, but CoWriter is an amazing tool for helping her write. Just wonderful stuff out there in the technology world.
Not that I’m saying you are disabled, obviously. But that’s the context that I first heard about Dragon.
Aren’t you tempted to write a novel, or a memoir, or a really long Sampiro-esque post? I always tell myself “Oh, I could never write a novel by typing with two fingers.” Oops, one excuse right out.
I am writing a book, though not a novel, and one of the main reasons I got the program was to jump-start the writing process.
My typing speed is 35-40 words per minute. I’m at about 90 with Dragon. The program could type lot faster – it’s my slow thoughts and words which are now the limiting factor.
Oh, and it pretty much entirely eliminates typos. The errors are putting in the wrong words, not misspelling them.
Do you find that your voice gets tired, or that you start speaking unnaturally when using voice dictation software? I used Dragon (7, I think) several years ago and I rapidly found that my throat got really scratchy within about 15 minutes, and then I’d start coughing and be unable to continue. I think it was something to do with the way I was speaking to the microphone, because I could sense that it was different to the way I normally speak.
Trust me, I can easily keep yakking away for upwards of an hour with no problem, just so long as I’m not speaking a computer, it would seem.
I would post a link to the wonderful scene from The IT Crowd about Denholm Reynholm trying to speak to his computer, but sadly YouTube is blocked at work.
Yes, I am noticing this, though not so quickly and maybe not so severe. I have started to keep a cold drink at hand. Works pretty well. FYI, they are up to Dragon 12 now.
My sister-in-law is disabled and has been using Dragon for years and years. It’s improved a lot since the early versions. Unfortunately she’s starting to lose her ability to talk (she has chronic progressive MS) so we’re not sure what we’ll do if that happens. But for a long time she was able to continue working as a freelance writer even when she could no longer type or use a pen; she was able to dictate to her computer all of her work.
Does yours hang after about an hour or so of dictating? My wife’s brand-spankin-new quad core laptop keeps hanging, and she’s using DNS 12!!
It may just be that she’s using it to write in MS Word. Maybe.
am I the first to think how great this would’ve been for umkay???
::d&r::
(sorry, couldn’t resist; it really does seem cool…)
;)
I have a Dragon App on my iPad. I’ll have to try it later tonight.
So, what happens if you are dictating and cough/sneeze?
It doesn’t recognize them as words, so it waits and prompts you with an onscreen message saying, “Say that again.”
A guy at work here uses Dragon. He’s a programmer and he just sits there talking to his computer all day. It’s very cool.
In fact, he’s made shortcuts to do a crapton of the things he does all the time and is more efficient than the rest of us are with our hands.
You mean her whole computer locks up? Hasn’t happened to me. The Dragon program has locked up 2 or 3 times, and I have to go to the Task Manager to shut it down.
Thank you for telling us about this. I started playing with the program built into windows 7. I think it’s really cool. I’m using this to type this post and I love it.
Do you know if Denise sees the fleece, Denise sees the fleas. At least Denise could sneeze and feed and freeze the fleas?
I personally don’t know, I’m still trying to figure out how There was a fisherman named Fisher
who fished for some fish in a fissure.
Till a fish with a grin,
pulled the fisherman in.
Now they’re fishing the fissure for Fisher.
If you try and sing “Jumping Jack Flash” in your best Mick Jagger impersonation, what is the output? Genuinely curious if it is more intelligible than what my brain parses Mick as singing… 
edit: But don’t do so if it would irreversibly corrupt Dragon’s learning algorithm. I’d hate for your future writing to be 'Mickified"…