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Re: voice recognition software

Tony,

I definitely recommend you try extensively any voice recognition software you are considering purchasing before you buy it if possible. The software can be expensive and, if not successful for you, a total waste of money. And, these programs use an enormous amount of computer power. Unless your hardware is fairly new (within the past two years or so) you'll have to upgrade hardware to run the program, adding to your expense.

Of the software available, Naturally Speaking so far probably is the best. However, it is not by any means foolproof, although there are many people who do have it and use it successfully. I am not one of them.

I do have Naturally Speaking and have found it to be a total waste of time and money. No matter how hard I've tried, including having a representative from the manufacturer sit down with me for several hours to "train" the system, the software simply does not seem to be able to consistently reproduce what I say -- and I'm talking about some pretty gross errors -- entire phrases which are totally wrong. And I'm speaking here of plain English, not scientific plant names. Although I do specialize in gardening and horticultural back-of-the-book indexing, I never could get the system to recognize English well enough to even begin to trust it with scientific plant names.

I find it much faster to simply type my copy,  as opposed to speaking into a mike and then spending an enormous amount of time and effort with the mouse and keyboard correcting errors.

As I said, there are people who use Naturally Speaking successfully. Perhaps it's a matter of voice tone, pitch, room accoustics, or a combination of all of these and other factors. But check this out carefully before you decide to spend your money. My husband is a four-finger typist as well, and even he can type faster and more accurately than my voice recognition system. Good luck.

Lina Burton
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