
- #DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 12 WINDOWS 10 SOFTWARE#
- #DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 12 WINDOWS 10 PROFESSIONAL#
- #DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 12 WINDOWS 10 MAC#
The vendor claims that accuracy out-of-the-box is 20% better than that of version 11, and in my testing, that did seem to be the case. Version 12 is outwardly not very different from previous versions, with the same interface and basic command scheme.
#DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 12 WINDOWS 10 PROFESSIONAL#
The Home and Premium versions come with a two-speaker analog headset, while the Professional and Legal versions come with a one-speaker USB headset. It made things a lot easier for me - I had to turn off my previous microphones every time I stopped speaking to keep them from picking up other sounds. Assuming that you stay focused while dictating, the error rate is now trivial (see sidebar).Īn important part of that new reliability is the noise canceling headset microphone supplied with the software, which does not react to background noise. For example, you can dictate effectively at about half the speed of an auctioneer - should you prove able to do so. You can use about the same volume for the phone and for speech recognition.īut with version 12, these factors have faded into the background (although they they haven't entirely disappeared). Meanwhile, if you don't mind being overheard on the phone then you won't mind being overheard while dictating - otherwise, find an office. Background silence is best, but droning ventilators hurt recognition more than office chatter. I have found it best to just speak the text as it comes to you without stopping for mistakes.

Remember, you are controlling a machine, not talking to a person. Enunciate carefully and speak slowly enough so that each word gets its due (although you don't have to go too slow).
#DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 12 WINDOWS 10 SOFTWARE#
Here are some tips you can follow that will make your use of voice recognition software easier and more effective:

But limitations remained: speech recognition was still more reliable with long words than with short ones (making it popular with doctors) misinterpreted words were often rendered as commands with random and startling results (Bill Gates himself was the victim of this at a live demo in 2006) the software's demand on the hardware was nontrivial (so that switching between documents could be painfully slow) and the software could get confused to the point that it stopped listening. The crossover point was probably NaturallySpeaking version 8 in 2004, when the utility of speech recognition finally outweighed its limitations. At first, speech recognition packages were more like frustrating toys with maddening limitations, but they have steadily improved over time. In fact, I've been using PC-based speech recognition on and off for nearly two decades to alleviate the stresses of keyboarding.
#DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 12 WINDOWS 10 MAC#
There is a version for the Mac called Dragon Dictate ($199.99), along with specialized Mac products for legal and medical workers.ĭragon also has several apps for mobile devices, including Dragon Dictation for iOS devices and Dragon Go, an audio search app for iOS and Android.Ī bit of background: I'm not new to speech recognition. Other versions include a Home Edition for $99.99, which does not integrate with spreadsheets or support off-line dictation and has no playback facility a Professional Edition with enterprise-level administrative, customization, and multi-user features for $599.99 and a similar Legal Edition with a law office vocabulary, also for $599.99. For this review, I tried out Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 Premium for Windows PCs, available for $199.99.

There are a variety of versions available. While newer speech recognition mobile apps such as Siri and Google Now have grabbed most of the headlines, one of the longest-running and most well-known speech recognition software packages is Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance. Dragon NaturallySpeaking corrects a dictated sentence from Shakespeare's Hamlet: The word "town" is changed to "tongue." In this case the correct alternative is second on the list and can be designated by saying "Choose two."
