Marc Orchant gives his first impressions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9

I have been a long-time fan of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) and recently reported on the new version 9 that has been released.  Podcasting buddy Marc Orchant has recently picked up DNS 9 and has written up his first impressions on ZDNet.  I received my copy of DNS 9 yesterday and will be relating my experiences of using the program as I get to spend some time with it.  The program is so cool to use, the dictation is surprisingly accurate using natural speech and the system control functions are very Star Trek-like.  The portion of the DNS 9 install that scans your email and documents to incorporate your writing style into the recognition engine to make the program more accurate with a minimum of training is not yet compatible with Office 2007 beta but the program works fine with all of those apps otherwise.  Marc seems to like using DNS 9 and had this to say (among other things):

If you're fortunate enough to work in a small private space, have the appropriate system resources, and can afford a couple hundred dollars for the ability to kick back in your chair and talk to the computer rather than hunched forward over a keyboard to get your writing done, you may find that Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0 is a great investment. I can say with all sincerity that my back and shoulders feel a lot better sitting back in my chair after a couple of days of dictating into, rather than typing on, my PC.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is available in a number of different versions, including special medical and legal terminology versions, from the Nuance web site.

-jk

Comments

[Mel Buckpitt]

JK,
I know that you are a great advocate of this type of application. Is there any chance that you could tell me (us!) how and when you interact with it. I am thinking here about the use scenarios office and mobile etc, what do you do with it, what do you produce with it, what did you have to change in yourself to get it the most out of it. Lastly what you cannot do with it.
I hope my list isnt too long but for me understanding the benefits of use is as important as the technology itself.

[jk]

Mel, I mainly use it for blogging and article writing projects using the dictation. This is mostly done in my home office so noise distractions can be kept at a minimum. I have used it occasionally in a Starbucks for dictation, too, but usually in a corner and only when they are not very crowded as they can get very loud. I really didn't change how I work much to get it to work, I did go through ALL training sessions to get good accuracy and try to always correct through the program as it adjusts the engine to handle uncommon words that I use.

The only real restriction for using any speech recognition program is that you really can't use it in noisey environments because ambient background noise can affect accuracy quite a bit.

[Mel Buckpitt]

Thanks for your views JK,

The background noise requirements might be the fly in the ointment for me.