Voice Recognition Software

Someone working in IT told my father that voice recognition software is still too expensive for what it can actually do at the moment, and that it's still in the developmental stages or whatever. But I've done a google search, and seen some reasonable prices, as well as claims of 98% accuracy for certain products, e.g. Dragon's 'NaturallySpeaking' software.
The software wouldn't be for me. I have little or no trouble typing. It's for my mother, and her office. Anyone have any info, knowledge, or advice they can share. Thanks!

 

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you need at least 1 gig of ram, and you have to speak perfectly..with punctuation and everything.

I wouldn't recommend it. Much easier (and faster) learning to type unless you've got no finger.

 

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The trouble with most voice recognition software is training it to understand your voice, its not as simple as installing it and 'you talk it types'.

More recently people have been trying to produce software that understands you without the need of training but i havent heard anything miraculous about it yet.

 

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According to THIS page (which contains information for 'Dragon NaturallySpeaking® Preferred' -the program mentioned in my first post), only 128 MB RAM is required, although I suspect 256 is recommended.
As for learning to type being easier, well, the thing is, my mother simply won't do that. And neither will anyone else in her office. I'd simply be roped into doing it instead, which I don't want.
I'll look into what you said Ste_harris.

 

I had an version of dragon about 2 years ago. While it said 126 meg required, this resulted in about a 20-30 second delay between when I spoke and when it typed. It wasn't really at all usable.

 

You could be right there.

I am sooooohh jealous.

Hopefully it's improved since then Persol, and I would expect 512 MB to suffice anyway.

 

I used voice recognition software about four years ago, it worked quite well and fast, it just did not know some words. No big deal, could use it after half an hour. But the punctuation and other things sucked a bit. Since the cheap microphone that came with it broke, I typed by myself again. Since I am somewhat faster writing, I still use my fingers. Now that I think about it, that programm bitched around when I dictated english texts.

 

I have a 2 year old Dragon Speak and it works OK for me. I use it with Word to get punctuation corrected and had to teach it some words but it did much better than I can type, which is hunt and peck style. If you have the time to teach it what it doesn't understand then I would recommend it to you. By now they must have improved it so I would give it a go for it only costed me about 25.00 US back then so it can't be to much more money today. I have 512mb of SDram now to operate my OS but had 256mb back when I bought it.

 

I once used a program that controlled my system through voice/ could execute programs, open disk drives, delete files, do anything, but I got tired after a while. Talking costs a lot more energy than typing. It had a dictate function also, but it didn't work so well as simple commands. Had a lot of stupid errors, but I have heard god words of dragon naturally speaking. I even got a iso file of one version, but have never bothered to install it.

p.s. I can type quite fast without even looking at keyboard

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success secret: dark rooms and nightly chats

edit: 512 of RAM should be more than enough

 

Good info guys. Sounds like it would be spot on for what we need.

Yes, I am beginning to live that way myself. It's scary to compare it to the way I used to live - how much things are changing.
But aaannyway, cheers!