Mmiri.com

" It is excellent but do you need the features of the Preferred version?

TFirst up the usual caveats. As with all software you need to make sure your computer is up to running it, and you shouldn't expect anything to run perfectly on the minimum spec.

The more up to date and powerful your PC is, and preferably with 2GB or more of RAM the better your experience will be in general.

That said, Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) does not need an absolute beast of a machine to run on. If your machine has at least a dual core processor and 1GB of RAM you'll pretty much be OK.

Also, when running software that is anywhere near critical you should avoid adding in or stuffing your machine with all manner of other software that might cause conflicts or other problems.

Now, the main thing that will concern you is which version of DNS do you want or need. If you are a student then get the most expensive one you can get a grant for of course.

But if you are buying for yourself you won't want Professional, as that is aimed at the corporate market. So that leaves this version (Preferred) or the Standard version.

The only differences of note between Preferred and Standard is that Preferred has a text to speech converter (e.g. a kind of screen reader) and will allow you to play back your dictation.

Lastly, Preferred can be used with dictation machines so you can record your words elsewhere and then get the software to convert them when you connect your dictation machine to your PC.

The actual text to speech engine is the same across all versions though, so if you don't need to work away from your PC, and can live without hearing your voice played back to you or your words turned into a computer generated voice then get the Standard version and save yourself a fair few quid.

Whichever version you end up with you will find it's an excellent piece of software.

The engine is extremely good at getting your words correct nowadays, and the workflow when using it soon becomes natural to you.

Give it a go, you'll be glad you did, and if you opt for the Standard Version you'll save a fair few quid too.

Mr. Ska - London, England "

" Not quite what it claims.

I bought this product to help with interview transcription, and to dictate emails. I found that the claim of 99% accuracy is far too ambitious and that even after training the accuracy wasn't that brilliant - certianly for my voice.

It is said that one should be able to speak naturally into the software and still get accurate results, and for me I find this is simply not the case, rather I need to make particular effort to ensure precise diction.

In summary: good, but not quite what it claims.

A. Keen, England "

" Preferred Dictation.

IDragon NaturallySpeaking 10 comes with small manual, a CD-ROM, and a dinky headset. Once you've installed it, you give it a bit of training, and let it scan your documents, so that it can analyse your writing style. You then take the tutorial and you're up and running.

From the point of view of dictation, it's actually surprisingly good. I ain't played with this technology 10 years ago and had had a good laugh, but now it picks up on your voice and syntax remarkably well.

Certainly for its core job of dictation, you can be very rapidly up to speed creating documents with the ease.

To give you an idea, this review is being written, using the software straight after playing with it for an hour without doing any corrections. So you can make up your own mind about how well it works.

It takes a bit more effort to use it in a web browser, as it can be difficult to get the commands right.

But even then it makes a pretty fair fist of it. I haven't tried it in Excel yet, so that's still open. One thing to note, is that the version I'm using, called preferred, does not natively support Microsoft Outlook although it does support Excel and Word.

So if Outlook support was important to you you might want to go to the professional version.

One other thing to note is that some of the mistakes in this document, are actually due to me, where I don't remember to say the word ",".

Also, as I'm new to this, you have to concentrate quite hard dictating, although it is very good at it.

If you were trying to edit documents I can see it getting fiddly using the commands. One other nice thing is that you can use the keyboard and mouse while you're dictating.

Tottom line, it's much better than I thought it would be. Given that it's still learning my voice, this implies that the results should be even better in a fairly short period of time.

I can see that it's real forte will be in document creation. And it understands apostrophes better than many humans!

P S apologies if the review is a bit jerky, dictating is quite hard when you're not used to it.

Prunesquallor, UK (United Kingdom) "