Hello,

I can remember some time ago we had a discussion on here about repetitive strain injury. I'm interested if anyone is currently dealing with this?

Being a full-time student and a musician as well, I seem to have destroyed both of my wrists! I've been to the doc recently but all he told me was to give them rest. A bit difficult considering I have so much to do for school!

My husband and I recently purchased Dragon naturally speaking software and I just can't believe the difference it makes! I'm going to try to get really good at it over the summer so I can use it for school next term.

I've typed this entire message with my voice, by the way! And no, before you ask, I don't work for ScanSoft!

:-)

Carrie

[This message has been edited by Carrie-uk (edited 04-14-2005).]

Carrie,

Does the program also insert the punctuations as well? I've often thought about using this type of program, however, most of the reports I had from a few years back said they were slow, and many words were not recognized. For me, as a freelance writer, this would be the best thing since sliced bread. Every Monday I have three newspaper deadlines, which amounts to approximately 8,500 to 10,000 words that day alone. Also, how much did the program cost?

Cheers,

Gary

Carrie,

I have used Dragon software in the past and it's truely amazing in what it can do. I used it to transcribe text. Are you using it to navigate the desktop ? I type so fast, that I became frustrated with the recognition speed of the software. I went back to typing after using it for a month or two.

Keep us posted on how you use it.

Hi Gary,

There is a feature you can turn on that automatically inserts punctuation, but it only inserts commas and periods. I haven't even tried that feature yet.

From what I gather, software like this used to be really slow because of slow computer processors. I'm using it with a Pentium III and the words appear on the screen almost as fast as I say them. The only thing that takes time is correcting misrecognized words, but the more you use it the better it is supposed to do.

It cost £70 for the standard version, but I don't know what it sells for in the states. Luckily for me, I'm able to set it up using American dictionaries and dialect so it understands my American accent even though I am located in England.

At the moment it's more than sufficient for typing e-mails and the occasional forum post. I've only had it for two days and it works great for that. My wrists already feel better!

Kbrkr, yes I am using it to control my desktop -it seems that most aspects of the computer can be controlled by voice commands. I can even tell it to shut down the computer by voice!

I don't know how it will do when I attempt to use it for writing essays and other important documents. Even if it just does a little better with accuracy, I think I will be happy with it for school.

Carrie

There is a voice recognition feature in the latest version of Microsoft Office if anyone wants to try this before splashing out on the leading Dragon or IBM software packages. This lets you use voice for both input and control with Word, excel, powerpoint etc.

You need to install the feature and it isn't as fully functional as the above mentioned packages but it gives you a good idea as to what can be achieved.

I tried it and it really works quite well. The longer you use the training section the better it works.

Keith F

[This message has been edited by KFingers (edited 04-15-2005).]

Hey, super!!! A computer that obeys your words like a little cuddly dog...*LOL*

If I say to my PC "Shut down!" then he usually answers "peeppeeppeep" which means for him "hahaha"...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)