Date: May 31, 2006 - Author: Matthew Harris - Editor: Rob Williams
There are literally tons of productivity software out there to be had. Some are applications that allow you to do specific things such as create documents, graphs, spreadsheets and do image editing. Others are used to improve your productivity by allowing you to have better control over the software you are using. Some increase the abilities of the software and some increase the abilities of the user. Today we're looking at one that does the latter.
If you're a geek you're generally a Science Fiction fan. In sci-fi, as it's known by fans of the genre, one of the common themes that we see in many films and TV shows is the ability to interface with a computer vocally. Indeed this has long been one of the dreams of many geeks that I know. Today I'm taking a look at a piece of software that allows you to achieve this to some degree.
No, you won't have your PC talking to you in the Valium leaden tones of Hal nor will it ask you to "clarify" in the voice of Majel Barrett because it won't understand anything but the most basic of commands. In fact, it's largely used to do dictation although if you want to take the time you can set it up to do more but only marginally more.
The software in question is Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred. I'm sure that many of you are familiar with the name and may have dabbled with earlier versions of the software yourselves. I had the basic version of Dragon back in 2000, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 4 Essentials. The differences between the version I had and the newer version are varied but I'm not going to go into any depth here since they're 6 years apart. In fact, sadly, I'm not going to go too far into the abilities of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred because it tried my patience to the degree that working with it was more of a trial than going about things the old fashioned way.
As you can see the packaging claims you can possibly triple your speed by using Dragon for creating documents rather than typing. I can see how this is possible but sadly it's one of those things that looks great on paper but falls short in reality. I used Dragon to write one review and what a mixed bag that was. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's take a quick look at what Nuance has to say about Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred shall we?
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 is the most accurate speech recognition product Nuance has ever developed - delivering up to 99% accuracy! No other product delivers the power, accuracy and ease-of-use that make Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred the ideal solution for the PC enthusiast or home office user! Talk to your computer and your words instantly and accurately appear in Microsoft Word and Excel, Corel WordPerfect, and virtually all Windows-based applications. Listen to incoming e-mail and documents read aloud. Search the Web by speaking URLs and links. Use dictation shortcuts that enable you to insert blocks of texts or bitmaps-such as your name, title, and signature-with a single voice command. Dictate directly into a PC or any Nuance-approved handheld digital recorder. A noise canceling microphone is even included. Now is the time to use the power of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred, and forever improve the way you work with your PC.
If you're interested in what the various versions feature compared to one another you can go here and see for yourself. As to what Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 Preferred offers physically, just read on and I'll show you in pictures :)
Inside the box you'll find the software, instruction book (no mere booklet here!), headset users guide and headset along with a flier and quick reference card. Trust me on this, unless you plan to do a whole lot of reading (the book is 200+ pages) keeping the quick reference guide handy isn't a bad idea. For instance, when you say a word and Dragon places the wrong word in the sentence you can retrain Dragon to better understand you. The method for doing so is buried in the book but is handily included in the quick reference sheet. I ran into this issue several times and I'm thankful that the quick reference sheet has the needed info for the quick fix.
The bundled headset is serviceable at best, it's uncomfortable, the sound isn't great but the mic does at least work decently. Any failings in Dragon can't be attributed to the mic. If you do have a decent stereo or better gaming headset though, I would suggest using it instead and giving the Emkay (no, not a joke) headset a rest. your head will thank you.
When you first fire up Dragon you'll be prompted to train it to learn your speaking style. Dragon does this after you create a user profile. The user profiles allow multiple users to use Dragon and understand the speech style and timbre of each individual using it. Not only that it allows a single user to use multiple input devices such as mobile voice recorders to dictate to since each device will alter the sound of a single user's voice.
After you start to train Dragon you'll be greeted with this screen, you read the welcome message and then move on to different texts to choose from for training:
Nuance has included texts from all different types of formats. From comedy to science fiction to legal texts to medical texts. You simply choose something to read aloud and go from there:
After deciding upon something you simply read the text and the yellow pointer follows along. If Dragon has any difficulty understanding what you've said the pointer will stop at the offending word prompting you to repeat it. Now, there was an issue I encountered with the text I used to illustrate this part of Dragon. If the text has periods and back or forward slashes in the text you have to read it as it's written...a picture is worth a thousand words so I'll show you what I mean:
In this example you can see the line of text I was referring to. I had to read it and pronounce everything exactly as written. Attempting to wrap your mouth around that and have it come out fluidly is quite the challenge. After you've finished reading Dragon will save the changes to the user profile and you'll be ready to start dictating. Now, I mentioned earlier that I had written a review with Dragon and that I had a few issues in doing so so I'm going to attempt to replicate those issues here for the sake of illustrating what had happened.
Before I do I should point something out, when you're first setting up Dragon it will ask if you want it to go through and read your email and any documents you have stored on your PC. I assume that it adds the words found to the user spelling database because in the review I did Dragon knew the proper spelling for the word that gave me so much trouble, Swiftech. I'll now switch over to Dragon and see if I can replicate the issue by reading a bit of the review and taking a few screenshots of what happens.
"In computing we have many cooling options. Air, water and a phase change being the most common in the enthusiast arena. Today will be looking at a top grade kit from Swiftech and comparing it to a similarly configured kid from the competition and see if there's a clear winner or loser."
Now looking at that quote you see the word Swiftech, the word Swiftech gave me a lot of problems writing the Swiftech review. Unfortunately it appears that Dragon has managed to learn to properly write the word Swiftech. I say unfortunately because during the writing of the Swiftech review Dragon was apt to spell Swiftech as swift Tech or Swiss steak and Swiss Tech. It was actually a crap shoot as to what I was going to be greeted with whatever I did say the word Swiftech.
Oddly enough the very first time that I said the word Swiftech Dragon caught it and spell it correctly. The reality of it is though, that I spent so much time going back and correcting Dragon's mistake that it actually took longer to write the review using Dragon than it did to write the review typing.
I do not know how much of this was due to the frustration factor and how much was actually Dragon's fault. I do know that after that limited usage of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred that I was so burnt out on the program I haven't used it since until today. I personally feel that if you've got the time to devote to working with Dragon and training Dragon it could actually be quite useful for you. Unfortunately though if you're not a very patient person you're not going to get the benefit from using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred because you're going to become very frustrated with the program and completely discount it. That's what happened with me.
So, what's this add up to? I'm glad you asked.
When it's all said and done Dragon NaturallySpeaking is not a piece of software that's going to be of major benefit to the casual user. The system for repairing mistakes is quite frustrating. Requiring you to tell Dragon to "Select word(s)" and then either choose the word(s) from a drop-down menu and telling it to "Choose 1-5" or "Spell that" then to avoid further mistakes "Train" which involves you saying the word you wanted it to put down then the word it actually put down because just simply correcting the word frome the drop-down menu won't preclude further mistakes.
In fact I became so burnt out on this after nearly eight hours of fighting with correcting one simple word (that Dragon had actually gotten correct the first time I said it) that I haven't had the inclination to use it further. On the other hand, if you're in a corporate environment and you are being paid to do a lot of typing. whether it be data entry or report writing or what have you and you'd be paid to sit down and dedicate a week (40 hours) to training every aspect of Dragon NaturallySpeaking to suit your particular speaking style and to hit all the words you use on a daily basis, Dragon would be a dream come true. I guess this all boils down to what you are going to use the software for.
That said it's time to render the final verdict. I'd be remiss if I gave Dragon a low score since it does not suit my needs because in this game I deal with a lot of product nomenclature that isn't part of the English language but to give it an inflated score would be a dis-service to my readers since many of you use the same product nomenclature in your daily lives (being the hardcore geeks that you all are). Taking that into consideration I'm awarding Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred a 7/10 and the suggestion that if you are in fact interested in voice control of your PC that you head to Nuance's site and look at the list I linked to earlier.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred might not be what you need, Standard might be a bit more to your liking.
If you wish to discuss this review, feel free to head into our related thread. You do not need to register in order to reply to our content threads.
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