Speech Recognition

[Wark]

I just built a new PC and I'm running Vista now. It has built in voice recognition, though I don't now how well it works.

Has anyone rattled off a chapter using something like this?

[LOG]

No, and I'd be leery of using.
Even if it works, I'd have to constantly delete stuff and re-say it.

[Ken]

... once tried an early version of this program. Hardly worked at all. Had to practically scream words for it to recognize them, and even then it got half of them wrong. Suppose the software has improved some ;-)

[Williebee]

I've used it some, and I've seen it demo'd by people who have taken the hours necessary for it to "learn" your speech patterns, and to get used to the command structure. The demos worked well. For me, it missed or misinterpreted about five words out of a hundred. I could live with that. My problem came in devoting the time to learn the command structure. "New line. New paragraph. Enter. Comma," etc.

[Ken]

... sounds pretty good, WIlliebee. 95% accuracy ain't bad at all. Will have to have another go at a speech recognition program sometime soon.

[Old Hack]

I've not used the Vista speech recognition program as this computer runs on XP, but I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking a LOT, as I have RSI. Version 10, Preferred.

This latest version is just brilliant. It's reliable, accurate and relatively easy to use, and a long way from those earlier frustrating versions. Once you get used to how it works your speed and accuracy pick up dramatically.

You'll need a good headset for maximum accuracy, and they don't come cheap: I use the Sennheiser ME3, with a little USB sound-pod: they're better than installed sound-cards, as they're not subject to so much electronic noise from all the other computer components (although when I trialled the version that Dragon sells complete with a bluetooth headset I had excellent results with the headset supplied, so perhaps that was only true of the earlier versions). You can read about it all on my blog. (http://howpublishingreallyworks.blogspot.com/search/label/gadgets)

[groovyville]

I tried the voice recognition on my XP desktop a while back. It was a pain in the neck. It got most of my words wrong and it was the most annoying thing to have to say "Backspace" five million times to get rid of the nonsense the computer thought you were saying. Yeah I never used it again after that.

If I hear that voice recognition in Vista is better I might try it again, but I would suggest only using it if you have tons of extra time on your hands to waste. It was fun to play around with, but I would never use it to type anything important.