Does anyone know anything - good or bad (preferably from first hand experience, rather than reviews) about this software?

My mother-in-law wants to restart doing an open University course, but has very arthritic hands and thinks that a voice-recognition package might help speed up her production of the essays etc.

I have seen a couple of other packages in action (a few years ago) but they seemed to be very slow to get anything into the comuter, and then weren't that accurate. This package gets a good writeup, but I wanted some real people's view before telling her to splash out on it.

Cheers in advance

It is a great bit of software the radiologist use it in the hospital were i work for writing reports there is even a German doctor using it and it can translate his English accents

The only down side is that you have to take the time to train it but other that that it is worth the money

I only have experience of an older type of this software, but from what I remember it's all about how you "teach" it your voice for instance, if you put a radio on really low in the background when you start, it then doesn't get too bothered when it "hears" other peoples voices in the background.

And other common sense stuff like that... It just might take an extra pair of hands to correct the words for her at the very start and then she'll be away!

Anyway, best of luck with it.

Steve

To begin with its a bit frustrating as it's constantly learning but once it's does its learning things get much better...... As long as you don't speak ridiculously fast...

I have used it in the past, if you invest a lot of time at the start then you will reap the benefits later on, towards the end of my uni final year(i only used it heavily for bout 2 weeks at the end) it was really very impressive. That was 3 years ago, they can only improve accuracy i guess

id say go for it

Thanks all... seems like it's worth a punt

i'd recommend a decent microphone and possibley a new sound card - any crackles on the line will cause it to need constant correction.

I have used a slightly earlier version - on an old PC, but worth bearing in mind if you have given her an old PC to "start with".

All the best to her I say!

You need a decent microphone, a quiet computer and a few months to train it.

My step daughter subtitles for a company that used to be a BBC department they are using voice recognition to subtitle near live broadcasts, it is taking many months to train the software to each subtitlers voice to get get working a useable level.

Of the off the shelf software Dragon has the best reputation.

Dragon can't be that bad a peice of Software if over 200 hospitals have adopted it as their chosen voice recognition package for radiology departments.

Up until last week I worked for Agfa Healthcare who are installing PACS, and 90% of our sites had gone or were going live with Dragon.

My understanding is that's it's more of a professional package than home use (although I see reason why you can't use it at home).

Already mentioned in this thread is the fact that radiologists use it to create radiological reports on their "RIS" systems. It's bloody powerful and learn all variations of people's speaking BUT as mentioned it can take weeks/months to teach it correctly. The learning process can be lengthily and tiresome. After a couple of months it becomes spot on but I would say that as an end user you also have to learn how to speak to it a little differently from how you'd normally speak.

[Edited on 3/8/07 by The Great Fandango]