dragon naturally speaking

foreign_correspondent

Just wondering if anyone has this, and if it is software you would recommend?

I type a lot for work (often from home), and sometimes get really sore hand joints as a result - I wonder if dragon would save me some time and dissomfort?

As far as I can tell, I just need the Standard version (Dragon NaturallySpeaking Standard 10) - does anyone know of any good deals on it anywhere? I may qualify for any 'Educational/Academic' offers/discounts...

The best price I can find is on amazon, but it is showing 1-2 months as the delivery time - I would like it sooner!

Alternatively, are there any other voice recognition software programes you would recommend?

Thanks in advance,

FC

KingL

I used to have it but gave up on it. The voice recognition isn't very good. You end up spending as much time fussing around correcting mistakes as you would have done typing it from scratch.

Have you got proper ergonic keyboards, wrist supports etc ?

bob_a_builder

I haven't used it myself, but the collegue I sit next to at work tried it due to same reasons as OP, but his experience seemed to mirror exactly KingL's, I remember him pulling his hair out over it,
and it was even worse if he had to take a phone call in mid dictate

needless to say he no longer bother with it

Humphrey10

I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking preferred 10 and it's great, much faster than typing. it only takes a few minutes to train it at the beginning before you still using it. The voice recognition is very accurate, and if it's having problems with any particular words you can you can train it to increase accuracy. I would have thought it wouldn't work so well in a noisy office though.
lots of people have problems with voice recognition software because they speak to it like they would speak in a normal conversation. You do have to try and speak clearly, and not too fast. you need to pay attention to your tone of voice and speak like a newsreader not as if you are having a chat with someone.

Taking a phone call as you were dictating wouldn't be a problem, you just turn the microphone off, which you can do with a voice command, before you answer the phone.

I dictated this reply with Dragon and as you can see it worked quite well.

billy_the_kid_2

My wife uses it, we have found it makes some mistakes but on the whole its better than two finger typing especially for a lot of text. Our only gripe is that it was a bit of a resource hog with our old steam driven pc, leading to lots of lag and some crashes.

AHAR

I was just reading something about Dragon Naturally Speaking earlier today...
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=644