I use Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking Professional 9. I have used versions from release 7 on, or for about 3.5 years. The accuracy was good on 7, great on 8 and excellent on 9. It's about $99 for the SW. http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking
The software works in any Windows environment. I use it for e-mail responses (Lotus Notes), MS/Word document development and instant messaging. When you speak, the software responds with character streams into the box you have selected. I have not used it with any particular PC emulation software. Since it responds with character streams into the box where you are typing, I think it would work quite well with emulation SW. It takes about 10-15 minutes to train it by you reading a story (that you pick) to teach it to recognize your voice. After teaching it, you can scan documents to load words you will use. It has correction features that make it a breeze to continue to learn. I invested in a substantial headset with dual earphones and noise cancelling microphone. You can use the standard headset that is shipped with it and see how it goes. I may go Blue Tooth next time. The recognition will only work for one person's voice, on a specific soundcard and a specific microphone. If you change any of these, you have to retrain the SW to recognize it. You can even teach it commands where it remembers key strokes. So, I trained it with "Com Close" (where Com = the nonsense name I use for "command" and "close" to close the e-mail and send. "Com Open" will open a new e-mail and "Com Reply" will reply to the current e-mail open. You can even teach it commands that respond to Windows Commands. If you say "Click File", it will point and click on the first "File" button it finds. Productivity: I can speak at least 2 to 10 times faster than I can type. (I type about 80-90 words per minute). Limitations: You CANNOT use this in an area where you can't get rid of the background noise. You could try Noise cancelling headsets, but I wouldn't even attempt it on a manufacturing floor. I set up my friend who is a doctor and he has completely cancelled the contract with his dictation service. He used the medical dictionary version. The dude is a 2 finger typer - painful to watch. Very versatile software. Worth a try. Steve Stephen M. O'Neal Lab Services Sales for U2 IBM SWG Information Management Lab Services ------- u2-users mailing list u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
