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Fellow writers and computer users: Can you recommend voice-recognition software? For a number of reasons - including freedom, avoiding wrist & other pains, portability, and so on - I want to try writing without using a keyboard.
Do you use something that you would recommend? Because I plan to use this for fiction-writing, I don't care if it integrates well with spreadsheets, special codes, and so on, but it needs to be good at understanding my voice and making sentences magically appear on the computer as I talk to it. Accurate ones, ones that don't require a lot of correction via mouse and keyboard.
And if there's a demo version I can download to see what I think of it, that would be perfect.
Thank you!
Chris
Do you use something that you would recommend? Because I plan to use this for fiction-writing, I don't care if it integrates well with spreadsheets, special codes, and so on, but it needs to be good at understanding my voice and making sentences magically appear on the computer as I talk to it. Accurate ones, ones that don't require a lot of correction via mouse and keyboard.
And if there's a demo version I can download to see what I think of it, that would be perfect.
Thank you!
Chris
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I've looked at the built-in stuff, but that's basically for voice commands rather than writing. I write fast, so any program I used would have to allow me to dictate/transcribe even faster to be worthwhile, and that means handling a lot of text all at once.
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Good luck if you have a Mac. It's an underdeveloped market. There really isn't much of anything that works as well with it. MacSpeech is the best, but it is not as developed as Dragon and you can expect lower accuracy and longer training to get it to work.
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So far, though...
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article here
Hey, maybe Independence Inc folks would let you try it out in their comp lab?
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Me (slowly and carefully): "Mr. Smith is a 45-year-old man who presents today complaining of a hernia."
Dragon: [pause] [pause] "Messed-up meth sorting ban hasn't to play gum raining of knee a."
I made that up, but it was as bad as that. And that was with the medical vocab module installed, and after weeks of "training." (The "training" was mostly an exercise in submission to the inevitable.) It was much faster, and vastly less frustrating, just to type the fucker.
I hear it's better now, but I'm awfully wary.
- Eddie
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(Also note that this one is the highest-rated by those above. Hm indeed.)
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David Weber started using Dragon when he smashed his wrist -- and it seems to work for him.
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I was really surprised -- pleasantly, I might add. It didn't take very long for me to train the software, and it was pretty accurate for what I was doing (working on my novel). And you can get it from Amazon for $75 or less. While I didn't get it in the end, it was because I decided that I didn't need it, not because it wasn't good enough for me -- if I change my mind, that's what I'd get.
That being said, the important things that make it work for me may fit for you, or they may not. I have a very neutral and stable accent, and my vocabulary wasn't terribly unusual for what I was writing. If you've got a lot of new or technical words in what you're working on, it may not work as well (which may account for the issues with the medical vocab module). As well, I used the headset that came with it -- if you use a non-headset microphone, it probably wouldn't work as well either.
In short, you'll need to make up your own mind (obviously), but it's WAY better than it was even a couple of years ago, and not really all that expensive if you decide you don't like it.
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There is built-in speech recognition in Windows Vista (which means you save $75), but it's not as good as Dragon, which has been on the market for a decade or more. Still, if you just want to mess around with it for a while, or use it as a replacement for keyboard shortcuts or whatever, install Vista and go to town.
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Installing any Microsoft product right out the gate is insane -- and Vista supposedly has a DRM that is a nightmare. The reviews are horrible.
Oh by all means install it if you never want to use media again.
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I haven't heard anything about Vista's DRM, but that stuff is, well, the law, right? I have heard of pople owning thousands of songs without ever having paid for them, and that's not cool. I have no problem with making it difficult for people to steal stuff *g*
Oh, and I bet that those bad reviews you've heard are the typical anti-Microsoftees belly-achin'. I heard one negative review that amounted to, "It's just not that much better than XP." Um, okay, so keep using something's that's almost as good.
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Decide for yourself :)
Somehow, I doubt that BBC News has it in for MS.
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This is the long academic paper on the topic. Gaaaaah! I am not going to go thru all of it, but it might interest you.
Me, I'm not into video, but I'm also not about to go away from my nice, stable Windows 2000 Professional, either.
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I long for the days of Windows 3.1.1. that used 6KB of disk space, really I do.
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Historically, the recognition statistics for Dragon and IBM have been largely compatible, though I think that (historically) Dragon had an edge in ease of use and IBM had an edge in recognition.
You can train yourself to speak the way that these things love. It will NOT work if you write the way I do, with lots of changes in the sentence as I type. Mentally compose the sentence, then dictate the entire sentence.
The market changed radically when Dragon was bought out by L&H, who promptly went bankrupt. Then IBM dropped out of the market ... it's only VERY recently that they've re-entered. I like the fact that I can again point to a product on the market that I helped shape, and may even have some intellectual property embedded. :)
Oh - and IBM re-entered with a splash: Mac software! http://www.nuance.com/viavoice/simplydictation/
More speech products: http://www.nuance.com/products/