Naturally Speaking 3.x Preferred Uk English

by Dragon Systems

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002S9AJ
• Item model number: 01-034-82-221
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,918 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From Winmag®

Dragon, long a leader in speech recognition technology, has introduced a new version of NaturallySpeaking with many minor improvements and one major revision. The big change is support for the Pentium III. This allows the program to cut down its lengthy training time (previously close to an hour) to 10 minutes. This is one of the first applications that makes real use of the SIMD extensions in the Pentium III.

I found the reduced training, or enrollment, time to be as promised. After installing and setting up the microphone, I spent five minutes reading sample text. It took another 5 minutes for the system to process the information and for me to set options such as balancing processing speed and accuracy. I then dictated a test document, trained the program on it and dictated again, this time correcting errors by voice only.

Including correction time, the test document took 9 minutes, 45 seconds, for a score of 50.4wpm corrected (almost identical to that of Voice Express). That bested my equivalent score of 42wpm corrected when typing.

However, NaturallySpeaking is a complex application with a rather steep learning curve. You need to understand how the software works to use it successfully, but the program provides little help-less than L&H's Voice Xpress. It also falls short in basic command and control functions for launching applications and moving about within documents, although it has improved in this area.