Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 9 – First Impressions
No training
So the latest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is out. As the release of Windows Vista with its integrated speech recognition creeps closer we’ve been waiting to see what Dragon would pull out of the bag. And they’ve come up trumps with the option to skip training. But does it work?
Well yes. Don’t be put off by the screen requesting you read aloud text during the volume and microphone set up; you can say what you choose. Once you are through this you can start dictating straight away. As a test, I created 2 user profiles; one with training and one without. I then read aloud a 350-word passage using both user profiles. The result: better accuracy without the training. I achieved 95% accuracy compared to 94% with the training. This is not as high as an expert would expect to get with Dragon but that’s because, like many users with dyslexia, I can’t read the training scripts with 100% accuracy or consistency. But this is still workable and once you are using Dragon regularly its accuracy will improve.
However, don’t assume that because you can now skip the training you can download recordings of lectures, seminars or meetings into Dragon to be transcribed. Skipping the training only works well for those users without an accent and you still need to be talking in a dictation style (no pauses or ummmms please…). And it is really important to dictate some punctuation as Dragon relies on this - once errors start to appear in the transcription they are likely to continue until you tell it to start a new sentence, line or paragraph.
Improved accuracy and response rate
Overall I found the greatest improvement in version 9 is the improved accuracy for recognising commands such as “scratch that” and “go to sleep”. The built-in read-back and play-back tools are also a lot more responsive without lags before the playback starts as in previous versions. This makes using the software much more user friendly and a lot less stressful to use.
System requirements
It has always been important in the past to take the specified system requirements for Dragon with a pinch of salt (as they have been generally optimistic). This time they’ve doubled: from 500MHz processor and 256MB RAM to 1GHZ processor and 500MB RAM. I managed to dictate into DragonPad (Dragon’s built-in word processor) on my 3-year old 1.7GHGHz laptop with 500MB RAM. However, there was definitely a lag when I tried to dictate into Word or run it with any other application, so we would recommend at least 1GB RAM. Beware that you also require 1GB hard disk space.
Bugs
We will be continuing to test Dragon and will be updating our website and support forum with the latest information as we find it. However, there have already been a couple of reported bugs with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 9. Of particular note are problems with running Microsoft Word due to incompatibility between Dragon and add-ons from other applications and problems with using Dragon with Outlook when editing HTML emails. Visit Nuance’s knowledge base for the latest advice.
Visit our product pages for more details on Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred and Professional
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