Dragon Naturally Speaking

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Author Message Anonymous   Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 10:39 am:    Is anyone using this software for augmenting specification writing work? Margaret G. Chewning FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: presbspec Post Number: 148 Registered: 01-2003 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 10:59 am:    What is it? George A. Everding, AIA, CSI, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: geverding Post Number: 407 Registered: 11-2004 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 11:08 am:    It's voice recognition software. My father was looking into it (but did not purchase) because he was having difficulty typing in the last few years of his life. In the demo he did at the store, it seemed like a pretty slick product. Christopher E. Grimm, CSI, CCS, LEEDŽ-AP, MAI, RLA Senior Member Username: tsugaguy Post Number: 125 Registered: 06-2005 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 01:28 pm:    For desktop computing, if you use Word, try tools > speech, and see if that does what you want Sometime I've got to look into speech recognition for Pocket PC to use in lieu of tiny on-screen keyboard! 2GB memory card oughta be able to support it you'd think. Christopher E. Grimm, CSI, CCS, LEEDŽ-AP, MAI, RLA Senior Member Username: tsugaguy Post Number: 126 Registered: 06-2005 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 01:40 pm:    Once installed it works in all Office programs. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HP030840991033.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/moskowitz_02september23.mspx Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 731 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 05:54 pm:    I had a friend who used voice recognition software for personal emails and such, and back when I started working (before computers) I had a boss who used to dictate specs "when he was really in a hurry" so they could be typed out. the issue is that most people don't exactly talk the way they would write a spec -- we have various interlocutory speech effects that would all need to be edited out, along with the confused wording. in my short experience with these items (mostly as experiments) I spent more time cleaning up the text after speech recognition than I do after typing it in. the products will learn to recognize the words that you say over time -- ie, it becomes more predictive -- but I would think you have to be a really slow and not very good typist for a product like this to make any sense. Now, if you want to just have fun with it, that could be a whole other thing. Richard Howard, AIA CSI CCS LEED-AP Senior Member Username: rick_howard Post Number: 159 Registered: 07-2003 Posted on Friday, March 07, 2008 - 05:28 pm:    Dragon Naturally Speaking came bundled with WordPerfect a half dozen versions ago. If you watch TV with captioning on, you probably have seen speech recognition in operation. When it doesn't "hear" correctly, it makes funny mistakes or justs puts out gibberish. I know some doctors who use that software with digital voice recorders to take notes for patient files. The application is good at getting about 95% of the intended text. It often has a problem with complex specialized terminology, such as spondylolisthesis, but it still is a real time saver over having someone transcribe a recording or read scribbles. I would be concerned if they tried to use it for prescriptions. I think the technology would be fine for taking notes in the field for observations or punch lists. But for specs, where a misplaced comma can change the meaning, the risk of errors would be too great. D. Marshall Fryer Senior Member Username: dmfryer Post Number: 60 Registered: 09-2003 Posted on Friday, March 07, 2008 - 06:31 pm:    My wife is a physician. Her office has been contacted over the years by several companies offering "custom" speech recognition systems consisting of Dragon Naturally Speaking tweaked for medical terminology, and a desktop computer with lots of bells and whistles, all for a very premium price. I suspect a substantial portion of this price goes to sales comissions. One salesman gave them a 30 day free trial. The results were almost comical. The number of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors initially was immense. Every umm and ahh appeared, and the system had the tendency to parse long words into a string of monosyllable words that made little sense. As the doctors learned to speak very slowly and carefully, the errors began to reduce, but never to the point where the edit time wasn't almost as long as the total time required by an experienced medical transcriptionist to type the whole thing. Needless to say, they did not make the purchase. David R. Combs, CSI, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: davidcombs Post Number: 265 Registered: 08-2004 Posted on Monday, March 10, 2008 - 08:34 am:    What timing. Technical review from last Friday's (03/07/08) Dallas Morning News: DNS Review A few excerpts: "Anyone who tries Dragon NaturallySpeaking should expect to spend many days learning to speak like they write. But before you do that, before you even install the software, you need to make sure your computer is powerful enough for it. If your processor is too slow or your memory is too small, Dragon will work slowly and err frequently." "It's deflating to see just how illiterate you actually are, but there is hope. If you force yourself to use Dragon several hours a day, you'll improve quickly. Once that happens, Dragon ceases to be a nuisance and starts to be a timesaver, particularly for e-mails and short documents. Anyone who writes a lot of memos should run out and buy Dragon. This is doubly true for people who spend a lot of time transferring text from paper to computer. People who mainly write longer, more complex text may not like Dragon so well. I'm still not comfortable writing stories with the software." The bottom line (according to the author): DRAGON NATURALLY SPEAKING 9.5 Cost: $100 Pros: Fast and accurate on powerful computers. Huge timesaver. Cons: Requires weeks of practice. Bogs down slow computers. Verdict: Great for simple writing. Harder for complex documents.