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Dragon Naturally Speaking 10
By Bruce Wildstein
Dragon NaturallySpeaking by Nuance has been the best selling computer voice recognition software for some time now. NaturallySpeaking 10 Professional is the latest version on the market, giving computer users sophisticated tools for dictating documents, e-mails, spread sheets and most any other kind of text. The NaturallySpeaking software package has a wide array of special commands that allows the user to completely format most any type of document by voice. The product comes with an installation DVD of course, but it also includes a quality headset with microphone which works well with the product. A Bluetooth microphone headset can also be used.
The installation took a few minutes on my Windows XP system with no problems. After installation, the software asks a number of questions based on who will be using it. It can be used by people with accents (American, British, Australian, etc), and also asks if you are an adult or a teen. The program then has you read about 10 short paragraphs so that it can begin learning how you speak. Speaking these paragraphs also teaches one about how a computer "hears", and there are also tips on how to have good speech recognition. A unique user file is then created for each person based on his or her speech.
Learning to dictate using the program takes some practice, although the learning curve is short. To be sure, it is different than typing on a keyboard. There are many advantages of course, in that all you have to do is speak into the microphone to create text. There is a wide variety of voice commands used to format documents, create punctuation such as periods, commas, new paragraphs, etc. If the program is having difficulty understanding a word and continues to misspell it, you can open a training box on the fly, type in the word and speak it. In this way you train to the program to understand how you pronounce that particular word. The training information is updated and saved in your user file whenever you exit the program. This is also very helpful if you work in an industry that has specific words that you want to use frequently in your dictation.
While the program is running, a small movable window called the "Dragon Bar" is visible on the screen. The Dragon Bar allows you to turn the microphone on and off and also provides access to a variety of helpful tools. In addition, the program can also read back the text that you have dictated in a supplied voice or your own voice, a helpful proofreading tool. There are other very sophisticated and complex tasks that the program can be taught. You can create what are called "macros" to perform multiple steps in the preparation of a document or form. And if you have repetitive tasks that you use frequently, you can teach the program to carry out the steps automatically for you by giving it a single voice command.
So how does Dragon Naturally Speaking work in the real world? I decided to use it while writing this article and it did quite well with few errors for a first time user. Another nice aspect of the program is that you can speak slowly and let it create the text a few words at a time or you can dictate a long sentence and the program will wait for you to finish before typing it all into the document. There are dozens more sophisticated voice commands for making corrections, such as backspacing one or more characters at a time, scrolling, etc. And I was amazed when I wanted to write the dimensions of an object and just had to say "ten by eight inches" and it would write 10 x 8" into the document. In all, I found the program to be very accurate, and only had to train it to learn a few words it didn't understand.
Without a doubt Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Professional is a sophisticated and highly useful program for anyone who wants to more easily create documents, write articles, or improve the speed of their work on a computer. For the home or small office user, you would probably want to check out the lower priced Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred version, $199 on their website. The program has won over 175 awards and as they say, it's the world's best selling speech recognition software
(http://nuance.com).