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Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred PC Review - www.impulsegamer.com -

Installation 8.8
Ease of use 8.5
Usefulness 8.8
Value 8.8
Distributor: Mindscape
Review Date:
November 2009
Reviewer:
James Wright

8.8


Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred


The definitive voice recognition program on the PC is the Dragon Naturally Speaking series and Impulse Gamer was given the chance of reviewing the latest version, Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred. Although there are some other voice recognition programs available for PC, Dragon Naturally Speaking is easily the best product available and considering that they have been in the business for a considerable number of years, it is quite understandable that this is the best product around.

 

The recommended retail price is $350AUD and although there are different versions of this product available, the Preferred version boasts some additional features that the standard version does not have. With that said, Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred has the following features;

 

Features

  • Accurately Turn Your Voice Into Text:
    Dictate continuously and naturally at up to 160 words per minute. Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition products have won over 140 major awards worldwide1 for accuracy and ease of use.

  • Fully Integrated with Microsoft Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and Corel WordPerfect:
    Use with virtually any Windows-based application.

  • Comprehensive Vocabulary:
    Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred comes with a vocabulary of over 250,000 standard and business terms. It's easy to add new words.

  • Insert Text and Graphics with a Spoken Word or Phrase:
    Create "Text and Graphics" commands (macros) that enable you to insert blocks of texts or bitmaps-such as your name, title and signature-into documents by voice.

  • Dictate When You are Away from the Office:
    Dictate into any ScanSoft-approved handheld recorder while you are on the road and you-or a transcriptionist-can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred to transcribe your documents later.

  • Listen to Your E-Mail and Other Documents Read Aloud:
    The award-winning ScanSoft RealSpeak is text-to-speech technology that reads your documents and e-mail back to you in a human-sounding voice.

  • Work on the Web by Voice:
    Search the Web, access information, and navigate Web pages by simply speaking URLs and links.

The Preferred Edition also comes with a microphone, although there are better microphones on the market but needless to say, it does get the job done but if you want to be one step ahead, I would recommend getting a quality noise reduction microphone.

 

After a relatively pain free installation, we were ready to test the software on both Windows XP and Vista. The only issue with the installation process is the activation which is a little annoying and dare I say, a little condescending.

 

However, before you can start talking and let the program do all the work, you need the train the program which for some can be a time consuming process. As you train the program by saying certain words, phrases and sentences, the software starts to recognise how you say certain words which assists in the voice recognition process. If you're in a rush, there is a relatively quick training module, however for better accuracy, I would recommend doing the longer training module.

 

We tested the program with Microsoft Office first and I must say that I was quite impressed at the accuracy of the software. Although certain words like slang or surnames may cause it confusion, you can train the software for certain words which does assist in the process.

 

Apart from office programs, it supports a variety of other windows applications such as mail and our favourite, surfing the net. It's great to sit back and even do something else and then say, search for movie times and "presto", it will start looking for results in Google. We configured it to open our emails which was a fun experience and you tell it whom to email and what you want to say. Even popular websites such as eBay is supported such as search eBay for Doctor Who DVD's.

 

So how many words can it translate? Although it was difficult to monitor, the developers boast around 160 words per minute which is thoroughly impressive and faster than I can type and yes, I did write this review with Dragon Dictate, although some manual editing was required.

 

The only issue that I found with the program is that certain words may cause some issues and need to be programmed into the software package but apart from that, it is quite an accurate program that is definitely a time saver and a life saver. If only they could turn this into an iPhone app!

 

P.S. Setting up shortcuts for programs was also another benefit that I have recently started using and abusing!






 
 



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