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I have been using the Dragon in its various incarnations for over 10 years
and have recently played with the MS speech feature built into Office2003.
For fast tying it cannot be beat. I know of few who can type as fast, for a
prolonged period as they can speak. It can also save a lot strain on your
hands and fingers. However, neither product will work without extensive
training of both the program and the user. Both have pros and cons. The MS
Office feature has the advantage of not costing anything more, its
recognition is crisp and about on a par with the Dragon, which costs about
700 for the professional version. However, for command and control with the
MS version, you must manually switch modes, I have not played with getting
it to use voice macros, which the Dragon does very well with its built in
scripting language and access to VBA. Again you must train either product to
perform with the same patience you use to train your dog. The biggest
disadvantage is that neither ever makes a spelling error and you must
carefully proofread you own work. You must also remember to turn off your
microphone when uttering expletives. Speakos can be embarrassing. I was
recently embarrassed when a substitution of the megavolt symbol was made
when "millivolts" was dictated.
Peter
> David Downing asks,
>
> >just how much success -- or lack thereof -- have people on this list
> had with speech-to-text software?
>
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