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Reid
Ha`aha`a
Andorra
1526 Posts |
 Posted - 12/14/2004 : 09:24:14 AM
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For the past few weeks I've been posting text by talking to you. I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8, a version of voice recognition software that has finally made it over the threshold of usability. I am using it now. I have been watching this sort of software for decades and this is finally it. It received rave reviews in the New York Times, and deservedly so. I bought it for one main reason and one subsidiary reason. The main reason is because of my tendinitis, which has been aggravated by keyboarding and mousing; at least the cure time has been elongated by that. Since using this software my tendinitis has gradually subsided, and I am finally starting to experiment with playing the guitar again after an 18 month layoff. So, with an occasional mouse click, I just talk to my computer and do nothing else. I write my e-mail with it, I control all Microsoft Windows applications with it, and it specially knows about Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. But I can use it with Mozilla Firefox, and any other Windows compliant application. It is also usable on Macs. I can also use it to control the Windows desktop.
I have only spent about 45 minutes training it. Some of that time has been spent making it understand Hawaiian words like aloha kakou kaua mahalo nui loa and a few others. It spelled tai chi correctly, and it spelled Sarah's name correctly (with an h). It even spelled française correctly, in one post. It is much less frustrating than my hunt and peck style typing. And I can turn out text that no one is interested in very rapidly. Which is the second reason I bought it: I never learned to type properly, and I type very slowly.
There are several editions of the software, and I bought the most basic one, called the Standard Edition. It cost only $80 at Amazon. If you decide to get it, you should determine which edition is correct for you, because each successive edition has additional capabilities. Like working directly with Microsoft spreadsheets or dealing with specialized vocabularies.
It comes with a chintzy headset microphone, but it seems to work very well, even in noisy environments. Right now I have the whole- house humidifier on, and it is a whirring in the living room (see, it even spelled whirring correctly).
Anyway, I am very impressed with it and it's been helping out an awful lot.
Oh, one hint: use the acoustic optimizer quite often. Even though it tells you it's going to take hours to do the job. It doesn't really, its estimator is simply wildly off. And make sure that only documents that you have written are in the my documents folder, because it looks at those documents to determine your writing style and your vocabulary usage. So put other documents that you stashed away into a subsidiary folder.
... Reid (it learned my name from my e-mail)
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