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In the early 1990s, I dabbled with voice recognition with the IBM ViaVoice. I bought this because I am not the world's best typist and I was producing numbers of long reports for various organisations, as well as technical papers. At the time, ViaVoice and a couple of other programs that were available used the discrete technique. This means that each word had to be dictated separately with a pause of about 1/5 of a second between each one. ViaVoice was quite a remarkable program.
About 1995, I switched to IBM Simply Speaking Golden which allowed one to use continuous speech, without pausing between words. The accuracy was slightly poorer than with ViaVoice because the algorithms could not always separate the words correctly. However, its speed and ease of use were a lot better.
A few years later, IBM dropped many of its software products to concentrate on its core business and voice recognition disappeared from its product list (although I believe that they still give product support on it). I therefore switched to Dragon for PC, produced by Dragon Systems. I can't remember which version I started with, possibly 5 or 6. It was not as accurate as the IBM system but still quite good.
Disaster struck me in 2002, in that I had a couple of small strokes which left my right hand considerably less mobile (and it still is less mobile). This made the use of keyboards very difficult and I relied on Dragon NaturallySpeaking, as it had become, for much of my general computer use, including on this forum.Upgrades in the software were rather sporadic in quality at this time, because they initially sold the company to a Belgian outfit who in turn sold it to another company who sold it to a subsidiary of Nuance. I went through the various upgrades, each with improved results as far as voice recognition was concerned, but Nuance made installation rather user unfriendly and their support was very poor (and still is). The problem started with version 11 which was quite unstable. Version 11.5 was not much better but version 12 was a very considerable improvement in stability and accuracy.
Nuance have just brought out Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 which I now have installed. The typical Nuance problems of installation and setting up remain but once it has been set up, this version is really fantastic. It can keep up with me speaking rapidly and the accuracy is very close to 100% (of course, if I stumble in my speech, it can produce bizarre results). I would say this software is now fully mature and I can now recommend it. This post has been entirely dictated with DNS 13 and I have made no corrections except in two places where my original dictation was unclear. The makers claim that it will work straight from the box; I cannot confirm this because I upgraded my personal profile from DNS 12.5 to DNS 13.
I have no vested interest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Nuance and am a very satisfied user of DNS, but I detest Nuance!
About 1995, I switched to IBM Simply Speaking Golden which allowed one to use continuous speech, without pausing between words. The accuracy was slightly poorer than with ViaVoice because the algorithms could not always separate the words correctly. However, its speed and ease of use were a lot better.
A few years later, IBM dropped many of its software products to concentrate on its core business and voice recognition disappeared from its product list (although I believe that they still give product support on it). I therefore switched to Dragon for PC, produced by Dragon Systems. I can't remember which version I started with, possibly 5 or 6. It was not as accurate as the IBM system but still quite good.
Disaster struck me in 2002, in that I had a couple of small strokes which left my right hand considerably less mobile (and it still is less mobile). This made the use of keyboards very difficult and I relied on Dragon NaturallySpeaking, as it had become, for much of my general computer use, including on this forum.Upgrades in the software were rather sporadic in quality at this time, because they initially sold the company to a Belgian outfit who in turn sold it to another company who sold it to a subsidiary of Nuance. I went through the various upgrades, each with improved results as far as voice recognition was concerned, but Nuance made installation rather user unfriendly and their support was very poor (and still is). The problem started with version 11 which was quite unstable. Version 11.5 was not much better but version 12 was a very considerable improvement in stability and accuracy.
Nuance have just brought out Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 which I now have installed. The typical Nuance problems of installation and setting up remain but once it has been set up, this version is really fantastic. It can keep up with me speaking rapidly and the accuracy is very close to 100% (of course, if I stumble in my speech, it can produce bizarre results). I would say this software is now fully mature and I can now recommend it. This post has been entirely dictated with DNS 13 and I have made no corrections except in two places where my original dictation was unclear. The makers claim that it will work straight from the box; I cannot confirm this because I upgraded my personal profile from DNS 12.5 to DNS 13.
I have no vested interest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Nuance and am a very satisfied user of DNS, but I detest Nuance!
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