dictating to Dragon Naturally Speaking 5
Here is a tool that lets you dictate into your word processor. This version of Dragon boasts improved accuracy and lots of extra commands that let you handle email and surf the web using voice commands. For instance, you can now say “Send”, “Check for new mail” and “Reply to message” and your wish is the machine’s command.
Naturally Speaking kicks in with a good listen-and-do tutorial and you read a chunk of manual to train it to your voice. The training takes five to ten minutes. You learn to correct mistakes, some genuine, most understandable and many due to twists of the tongue. You’ll say “correct that”, see a numbered list of choices and them say “choose five” to pick an item from a list. Speak fluently, never mind how fast, and the force will always be with you. To get serious you can have Dragon read through old documents to add new words to its dictionary. The more expensive Preferred edition is for those using it in earnest, it lets you paste in chunks of text with a word or two, so it might suit doing a heap of school reports. There are also many more commands to format text: fonts can be changed or text coloured but the speed they offer comes only from practice. The underlying engine is much the same, which makes the standard edition good value.
Coming from the same firm as L&H Voice Express 5, the two products surprisingly share none of the same internal machinery. It’s a taste thing which each package will have its adherents. There was little to measure – using the style of speaking that best suits news reading, both gave great results. They look different too – Voice Express had the better tutorial and lots of add-on help. Naturally Speaking by comparison is tidier and coherent. Whichever way you go, it helps if your machine exceeds the specs as much as possible and that you allow a week or so to learn to talk proper like.
Voice Xpress Standard £39.99, Advanced £79.99, Professional £119.99. with headsets Requirements start at a Pentium II. Information: www.lhsl.com