Dictating with Dragon

We all have dictation software on our cell phones.  It is decent, but not accurate enough to do anything substantial.  I have used older versions of Dragon Dictation for the PC and found it to be slightly better than the phone version, but still not worth the hassle.  I spent more time editing what I dictated than if I had just typed it all in the first place.



So I was not expecting much when I tried version 12.0 for PC and version 3.0 for Mac.  Right out of the box, it was about what I expected, fairly accurate but every now and then it would throw a random word like goat in the middle of a sentence in the place of something of some random word like building.  Obviously, some similar sounding words were typed wrong by the software, but I was most disappointed with the random words that were not even close to what I had said.

So I decided I would take the time and do all of the various "training" the software offered.  Since we all speak differently, even if we have the same accent or dialect, the software struggles with new users to accurately figure out what is being said.  So I spent about 45 minutes total doing the various speaking exercises and I was blown away.  The software was in the are of 99% accurate like it claims.  Occasionally it would miss type a word, or more often would entirely miss a part of a sentence.  But this was rare.  It only occurred about once per page of typed text.

Overall I would find about four to five errors total per page of text.  But most of those were from my own stuttering and stammering when I spoke.  I was spoiled in the past having a typist that would take all of my miscues out making a clean dictation.

The software does allow you to make corrects as you.  However, both my PC and Mac struggled with this process.  The software uses a lot of memory.  I found my PC with 4 GB of Ram far outperformed my Mac with 2 GB.  But I suspect having 8 GB would make this a very smooth operating platform.  I had a lot of lag time especially with the two gig Mac.  But it still happened with the 4 GB PC.

The software allows you to use your cell phone as a microphone which is a very handy feature.  What I actually started doing was dictating into my phone's voice recording app.  Then I would transfer the file to my mac or PC and use the transcribe feature in the software.  Once uploaded I would walk away for a few minutes and when I returned the text was all complete and ready for me to make corrections.  I found this to be easier for me.  When I would dictate I often times found myself waiting for the text to appear on the screen in case any words were missing or out of place.  This slowed the dictation process and interfered with my train of thought.

As a writer writing as much as 10,000 words a day this software has saved me hours upon hours of time.  By dictating into the recorder I am able to write while I pick my kids up from school (well until the get in the car because they are pretty loud) or any other time I have a few minutes of free time and do not feel like sitting in front of the computer smashing away at keys.  I type fairly fast, but this is much faster and easier.

The software is not cheap.  And I would recommend a decent microphone for the most accurate performance.  But it is well worth the investment if you do any significant amount of typing or you a re just a lousy typist.  The other great thing about the software, it does not make spelling mistakes.  If you are like me you spell so bad that spell check can not even figure out what you are trying to say half the time, it is just icing on the cake.

Do not expect the software to work wonders right out of the box.  It does have a little bit of a learning curve to get used to the various commands and speak at a fluid rate.  You will have to train the software no matter how well you speak.  But with a little time invested this software will save you a lot of stress and frustration.