Voice Recognition Software

[Buttsmacker]

My mom wants to buy Dragon Naturally Speaking 9. She had a previous edition some 7 years ago, and it was just a PITA.

Anyone have any suggestions about alternatives and/or if Dragon is worth the price (~100 bucks)... I need software that is easy to use, because she isn't exactly computer friendly. She's running XP home on a laptop that's a good 4 years old, and a desktop that is newer (but I have no idea what is in it).

Thanks

 

[RiverDog]

It seems to work well for me. The biggest problem is the sound card. Most cards are made to output sound, not input. You need a card that is made for speech imput.

 

[spherrod]

Dragon worked well for my wife - once she'd done the training it was virtually flawless

 

[Buttsmacker]

great, thanks for the info guys

 

[wwswimming]

i just took a Dragon class where we were using Rev. 8
running on Dell 2.8 GHz P4 systems.

it was a good configuration for learning Dragon, but,
there were 2 things keeping it from being "production-
ready" -
* recognition errors.
* about a 15 second delay, sometimes, between
speaking a phrase & recognition.

that delay would result in additional recognition
errors, until you learn how to work with the program.
speaking in phrases
so it has time to recognize
the words

the instructor said she did a trial with 9 and found that
there were about 25% fewer recognition errors. my
guess is, that trial was on a much faster computer
than the old 2.8's in the classroom.

campustech.com has Dragon Preferred Rev. 9 for $150.
not much of a savings, really.

also, there's the MS Voice Recognition Engine.

and, "i have heard of" - Apple has Voice capabilities in
their OS ... but i don't know what yet.

 

[Looney]

If you have Vista, Vista has a fantastic voice recognition ability built in.