Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Premium Mobile Edition (PC)

I've not used any speech recognition software for approximately 5 years. I have to say that the progress that has been made over that time now makes me realise that I have been missing out on something that could improve my productivity substantially.

Presumably it is a combination of better processing power for laptops combined with software improvements. The claimed 99% recognition more or less straight out of the box is not an exaggeration. My reaction to seeing the level of accuracy was one of amazement. There is no doubt that this is now a piece of software that everybody should seriously consider owning.

If you have come this far, you have no doubt noted that version 11 of the software comes in four different packages. There is a more basic home edition, which is a very reasonable price, but offers a more limited command set. However, if you want to simply dictate into word or e-mails and so forth, it will certainly do everything that you require of it.

Going up the product range, there is the premium edition, which carries the complete command set which can be used for a variety of ways of controlling your computer. Basically, with a little practice, you can effectively use a computer without touching it with your hands. This of course has enormous potential for people with restricted mobility. For those who have more money to spend there are basically two options. The first of which is to include a Bluetooth headset / microphone. This does have considerable advantage because it means that you can move around more freely, without the wires. The alternative is this one that you are looking at now, which includes the Phillips dictation machine. The machine included was much better than the one advertised - details are:

Model Philips Voice Tracer LFH0662
Memory: 2GB
Capacity 4 folders with 99 files in each
Recording time: 23.5 hours at SHQ (best for transcribing in Voice recognition)
Power 2 x AAA (rechargeable via machine on USB)

With the philips machine there is the option of using the onboard mic / speaker or you can attach the mic headphone set which is provided with the Dragon software or you can use the lapel mic provided by Philips. The machine is very light, easy to use and can be used as USB storage for transporting files, as well dictating on the go.

Dragon transcription is very straight forward. You simply click into transcribe mode, select the file (having attached the Philips via USB) and as if by magic the word start to appear on the `dragon pad' or direct into a document if you prefer. Unless you are very practiced at dictation you will probably need to edit it a bit, but again the results are very impressive.

So - this is a glowing review. The software installs easily, the help is helpful, and I found that I quickly became competent to use most of the basic features for dictating. There is no doubt that I am in the first flush of enthusiasm, but given that the programme gets increased accuracy the more you use it, I see no reason for my enthusiasm to get less. For computer users with specific difficulties such as dyslexia or RSI this could be an essential purchase.

Oh - and this is my first dictated review - it took a few minutes!

Highly recommended. Very definite 5 stars!

Let me start by saying that this review is being typed (or should I say dictated) using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 premium Mobile edition. This is just one day after receiving the product through the post. As you can see it is very simple to use, even by someone (me) who has not used Dragon speech recognition software before.

The software installation was quite painful, mainly because it required a C++ runtime which failed to install properly first time, so I had to uninstall the Dragon software and start again from scratch. Even then it took 2 restarts to get the software working. The minimum PC requirements are for XP SP - 3, but Windows Vista or Windows 7 with 2 GB of memory would be preferable minimum. Searching the Internet I have found other people had experienced this issue also.

But, OMG, the software is absolutely incredible, and it definitely makes up for the painful installation. As you can see it is typing every word I say almost without error. Okay, I have to admit that I didn't work out how to type the "++", and I manually corrected some formatting, but you can see that this is a very powerful software. It took around 10 min to train the software with predefined text that you read aloud, then after that, utilising the Dragon sidebar, it is very easy to start dictating whatever you want. You do need to learn the Dragon commands, and also how to dictate to include punctuation for example, but the software comes with a quick guide, plus Dragon sidebar shows relevant help for the software that you are using. For example," open mail" will open your e-mail software;" save" will save your document/e-mail;" switch to dictation mode" will allow you to say words that Dragon would otherwise recognised as commands, e.g. "help.

My dictation, at this point in time, will leave a lot to be desired but given a couple of weeks practice I can see that I will be creating e-mails and documents as quickly as I can type them. Over time you can also train the software to recognise more words some of the words that perhaps it doesn't understand but so far for me I haven't had to do this very often. You can also create different user profiles so that it can recognise different people's pronunciations.

Alongside the provided dedicated headphones and microphone set, it also included with the software is a digital dictation device, made by Philips. Slightly smaller than a mobile phone it is very simple to use; I did not even have had to use the manual to work out how it works; the help pamphlet is quite comprehensive though. you can then connect the device to your PC via a standard USB cable and download the recorded speech which you can then transcribe into text. I found the transcription prone to a few more errors though, I suppose this was because it had recorded background noise as well, something that a dedicated headset would help reduce.

I'm still absolutely flabbergasted (yes it recognised this word without me having to spell it), but it recognises so many words without me having to train and re-key words. The main difficulty I had so far is just working out some of the minor formatting issues, and moving around between different software such as Firefox, Windows Explorer and Outlook express, and then navigating their file menus.

I cannot recommend this software highly enough; absolutely amazing!

I have been suffering from a condition called strabismus for a number of years. This condition has made it increasingly difficult to use a computer for long periods of time due to eyestrain. This has become much worse in recent years following various bouts of surgery.

I have in the past, quite some time ago, tried voice recognition technology but at the time found it to be fairly inaccurate. Since then though my eyes become a lot weaker and I have been seriously considering finding a good voice recognition package.

I was therefore very interested to receive and try this package to see if the technology was now mature and could help make life easier for my eyes.

Firstly I'm pleased to say this was very easy to install to Windows 7 and I've had no stability issues. I'm very impressed with how well it integrates into Windows and just how easy it is to use. When you run the program it comes with a bar across the top of the screen which allows you to easily find and activate various functions. It also comes with a sidebar which assists greatly in helping you get the best out of the product and everything it can do.

The product can be used for voice recognition but also has text to voice to read text back to you and on top of that it can translate voice files to text and this premium edition of the product comes with a very handy digital voice recorder that can be used to record files whilst out and about that can then be translated by Dragon into text on your computer.

When first using the product it goes through a training process to help you understand your voice and help ensure that it is as accurate as possible in understanding and translating what you say. This initial training process only took about 15 min.

Following this I have found the product to be surprisingly accurate and very easy to use. Where it does get words wrong you can very easily tell it to "corect that" and tell it what the word should have been. This allows you to gradually train it to a very high degree of accuracy.

Alongside this accuracy it works impressively quickly and I'm finding that within a few hours of using it i'm able to speak at a quite natural pace and the technology can keep up with me, can translate fairly accurately and works very well indeed.

The files produced by the digital reader are not quite as accurate and I find a little more work is needed going through them and correcting them but it still reasonably accurate and very helpful to someone like me who can now use this rather than taking notes in various meetings and it will greatly speed up transcribing those notes following a meeting.

On top of everything I've said Dragon can also be used to control your computer to run programs to launch web browsers to kick-off searches for certain information all of this is in addition to its primary function as a voice to text product.

I'm pleased to say this is a highly featured very functional and impressive piece of software and as a sufferer of eye problems for a long time I will be getting extensive use of it and am very pleased to have it. This is definitely something that I would buy in future.