Review: Dragon NaturallySpeaking

If you're like my wife or myself, you're typing is anywhere from one finger typing to about 40 words per minute. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech to text software, you could increase your typing to an effective 120 to 160 words per minute.

We have been into computers since the first Tandy and Commodore computers many years ago, and when they started developing text to type software we took interest in it. Our first speech to text software that we tried was the IBM ViaVoice. IBM ViaVoice was very slow and cumbersome and it literally took hours of training to teach ViaVoice to be somewhat accurate in typing your text. In the long run it was faster for us to type than it was to use IBM ViaVoice, but that was years ago.

With the new Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech to text software, training it takes about five minutes. The training process is very well organized and laid out and while you are going through the process of training Dragon naturally speaking you are simultaneously learning how to use the software itself. When I installed it on my computer, I plugged in my headphones and microphone, I went through about five minutes of training time and then I began dictating with about a 95% or better accuracy.

One warning if you're interested in purchasing this program, make sure you get it with a Dragon naturally speaking approved microphone or headset. The quality of microphones in a digital environment is crucial. We purchased ours on eBay from an individual that claimed the software came with an approved headset. When we got the software there was no microphone or headset. We purchased a cyber acoustic headset with microphone at Wal-Mart for about $18, it is not on the approved list on Dragon's website, but it does work quite well on my computer. When we complained to the man we purchased the software from, he sent us a cheap headset made in China, and outside of having fun of talking into it and seeing the bizarre language and words that were coming out in text, is headset was worthless. Our Wal-Mart headset is adequate but I'm sure a high-quality approved set would be even better.