voice-recognition software

[mckitterick]

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

Comments

[the-monkey-king.livejournal.com]

Oh, gimme a break.

mckitterick worked with beta OS installs for years. It's just like tinkering with hot rods or motorcycles, only with reg edits; he can handle the release version of Vista just fine.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Heck, I worked with Alpha versions on my home test machine, and never had much of a problem. Usually the new software - even in test form - was as good as what was already out. Granted, XP is light-years ahead of 98 or NT, and I doubt the beta version of Vista was better than XP stability-wise, but if it's released, tends of thousands of Microsoft-employees have already been running it for months and years on their home and work machines.

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.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6286245.stm

Decide for yourself :)

Somehow, I doubt that BBC News has it in for MS.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I read that and didn't see anything about what you mean; I wonder if they changed the article since you read it? Now it just says that Vista will downgrade illegal copies of policy-protected HDDVDs and Blu-Ray discs. Right? Um, I don't have a problem with that. Copyright is copyright, and if I'm trying to play a stolen movie or CD, well, that's better than jail, I say.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

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.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're still using Windows 2000? Really, XP is even more stable; it's basically 2000 with all the bugs fixed and nice new features. Oh, but it does use more than 6KB of space *g* (Note, however, that computers nowadays come with 100GB drives... 15MB is nuthin'.)

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

See the linked story below; am I missing something that Kalimeg suggests is there?

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the space hog wants 15 MB free disk space for the Premium version. Bloatware, thy name is MS.

I long for the days of Windows 3.1.1. that used 6KB of disk space, really I do.