Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 - a follow up

Now that I have been using this software for about a month, it is probably time for a follow up.

Voice dictation is certainly a great way to quickly get text into your computer. On my last trip, I had something like 26 customer meetings in three days during a conference, so it became a reasonably easy task to take my scribbled bullet point notes, and dictate them as more complete sentences to form my "typed" meeting notes. I did find that trying to dictate unusual company names did not work so smoothly unless I spelled them out them letter by letter every time, but I soon learnt to get around this by saying "the customer" and then doing a search and replace in Word later to insert their name.

For this particular application, Dragon NaturallySpeaking worked as or better than expected. The accuracy for my voice is remarkable, and the few times it does get something wrong, it is easily corrected. I have found that correcting the mistakes properly is a little fiddly, but is well worth the effort as the accuracy improves further for future dictations.

I have also now started to try using it for replying to emails and composing documents. So far it has not worked quite as well for me although the problem is with me, not the software. For example, I recently had to prepare a basic market status report for a new product, and so I sat down, donned the headset, and attempted to compose it from scratch using voice dictation. I failed miserably. As I sat there and tried to speak sentences as they came to my mind, they came out very haphazardly, and not only did DNS struggle to understand what I was saying, but even when it got things right, the quality of my writing was poor. It came across like someone who was just making up an answer to a question as they went along.

The problem seems to be with me and the way I write. I seem to be better at writing when I compose with a keyboard or even use a basic mind mapping tool like Freemind to get the main ideas ready. If I have to do the same by voice, I pause, say "um" a lot and generally come away not terribly convinced about what I have put together.

On the other hand, if I already have some notes, or even some basic bullet points for me to refer to, I can then do a reasonable job turning it into something useful by voice dictation.

There is certainly something to this Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, and I do not regret the purchase. The ease of use for my customer meeting notes alone has been worth the price of admission. I am learning however that I need to have a framework in place before I dictate. It is not a perfect solution for composing an opus from scratch.

This may be different for others, although when most people have to work through an awkward impromptu speech if they are put on the spot, there tends to be lots of "ahs" and "ums", so I am probably not alone.

Based on my experience so far, I still strongly recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 for someone who is looking for a quick way to get text into a computer, would like a break from the keyboard from time to time or needs an alternative text entry option due to physical difficulties etc. The accuracy is certainly more than acceptable for my requirements.

I just need to have a reasonable idea of what I am going to say, before I say it!

Later.