Speech Recognition Software

[skymama 35]

My Dad is looking into using something like this. Does anyone have any experience with it to know the pros and cons? Like, would it work well with his laptop at a noisy jobsite?

She is Da Man, and you better not mess with Da Man,
because she will lay some keepdown on you faster than, well, really fast. ~Billvon

[Icon134 0]

Quote

My Dad is looking into using something like this. Does anyone have any experience with it to know the pros and cons? Like, would it work well with his laptop at a noisy jobsite?

Windows Vista has it built in... I had some issues when I was trying it out the first time and it is a resource hog (I mean more so then the operating system alone)

but all in all I think it's kind of neat... I also was using it in my room with no one else around me and was not using a microphone near my mouth so that may have affected the reactions of the computer.

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[IanHarrop 37]

Its been built into MS office for many years. I have Office from 2002 and its there.

Open Word.
On the Tools menu, click Speech.
You're asked if you want to install the feature. Click Yes.

After the installation is complete, click Next to train speech recognition.

Training begins with help in adjusting your microphone.

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[StreetScooby 5]

Dragon originally set the standard with this technology (in my understanding).
http://www.amazon.com/Nuance-Communications-Inc-A309A-G01-9-0-NaturallySpeaking/dp/B000GUDDXA/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1213289928&sr=8-2
I've never actually used it, though I have spent some time considering buying it. It's what I would buy.

We are all engines of karma

[skymama 35]

So, can microphones be used with laptops?

She is Da Man, and you better not mess with Da Man,
because she will lay some keepdown on you faster than, well, really fast. ~Billvon

[napvid 0]

I tried Speech Recognition in collage mainly because I hated to write. My spelling sucks and my hand writing looks like crap. Anyhow, in my opinion it does not work so well. I thought great ill never have to write a paper again or anything else for that matter. That was not the case.

My program of choice was (Dragon Naturally Speaking Pro)

Ill start with the cons first.
1. Any decent program is pretty expensive I think I paid close to $300

2. The program AI out of the box is pretty dumb. What I mean is it doesn't recognize much.

3. You really need patience because it takes a lot of training just for the program to work some what decent.

For example, I would literally read books, newspapers, magazines and just about any other thing I could find. And that takes for ever because as your reading and the program is typing your constantly correcting the program with these silly commands.

The pros:
Um...ah...oh yeah I probably read more that month than any other in my life.

Conclusion:
I gave a really good effort to try and make this work for me but in the end it was to frustrating and time consuming to deal with.

nap

“As you know, these are open forums, you’re able to come and listen to what I have to say.” –George W. Bush, 10.28.03.

[TheBachelor 4]

I bought IBM's Via Voice for my dad. I tried it out at home, and it worked pretty well. You just had to learn how to talk to it. It could handle "normal" speaking pace, but you wanted to be sure to annunciate. After training it, I thinik it was more than 95% accurate.

Anyway, when my father tried to train it and use it, he couldn't get it to work that well. I think it was his annunciation. He quickly got frustrated with it, and gave up. It didn't help that he know very little about computers.

Yes, they are resource-intensive, but most computers bought in the last few years should have no problem.

There are battered women? I've been eating 'em plain all of these years...

[FlyingJ 0]

I worked with an aunt that has MS to set up her computer with speech recognition software as she began losing use of her hands/arms. It was a fairly early version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. She worked very hard and put in a lot of time "training" the software (through reading scripts they supplied, etc.) and it worked really well for her. She used it more for navigating and composing basic email, etc. so if there was an occasional misspelling, etc. it wasn't the end of the world.

I found the Dragon product to be fairly intuitive and easy to get up and running.

Killing threads since 2004.

[yamtx73 0]

Dragon Naturally Speaking
Via Voice

Those are the 2 I'm familiar with... both are fairly easy to use once you get the mic set up... it also helps with your pronunciation... and yes, a laptop can use a mic (little plug in should be on the side or back)

The only naturals in this sport shit thru feathers...

[popsjumper 2]

When I used it, it was very tiresome having to concentrate so hard on pronunciation.

It was also not very responsive if the was any background noise going on.

It worked well enough if it was very quiet and I pronounced my words very deliberately.

I canned it...wasn't worth the effort.

What your Dad needs is a personal secretary. Shorthand and typing not required.
Say! I know just the girl for him!

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[skymama 35]

Quote

What your Dad needs is a personal secretary. Shorthand and typing not required.
Say! I know just the girl for him!

He's very difficult. He pays me well because no one else is crazy enough to work for him.

She is Da Man, and you better not mess with Da Man,
because she will lay some keepdown on you faster than, well, really fast. ~Billvon

[Fast 0]

We have 5 attorneys in my office that use it. Most of them use it for writing emails because they have secretaries for documents. I can sit down on a machine that isn't trained for me and it gets at least 80% of the speech right.

The latest version is pretty damn good if you ask me.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka