Five star dictation software
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I tried Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software. I was less than impressed. Using my good quality Steelsound headset produced very poor results and I wasn’t about to stump up for a new and expensive headset without being sure that it would be a success. What’s more, I wasn’t all that sure that the dictation process would work for me.
About the time Vista was first released, I trialled NaturallySpeaking again (version 9 I think) but after a rather large download it transpired that NaturallySpeaking was incompatible with my 64-bit Windows.
I gave up in some disgust once more.
Enter stage left a bit of pain in my hand which I’d put down to excessive mouse use but turned out to be a touch of arthritis. Old age is everything it’s cracked up to be. 😦
Desperate measures were called for, so after reading a couple of reviews I decided to revisit Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Nuance no longer have a free trial available – perhaps because the software doesn’t perform well with most standard headsets – but the home version is not very expensive and it comes complete with a compatible noise cancelling headset. So I bit the bullet and gave it a go.
It is amazing.
Good headset included
I was concerned that the obviously low cost headset might be fairly hopeless but in fact it’s very good. The program does everything Nuance Software claims. It even coped right from the start with my Kiwi accent. Apart from working through the initial creation of a user profile, which didn’t take very long, the software worked magnificently right out of the box.
It’ll take me a little while to get used to talking to a screen instead of bashing away at the keyboard, but it’s a lot easier than I expected and I suspect that this software is going to change my digital life.
It’s impressive
Well done Nuance, I’m really impressed and as a result, yet again I must say goodbye to a complete switch from Windows to Linux.
This post was dictated using NaturallySpeaking and no keyboards were harmed in the process.
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