That meant another 15 minutes of mindless reading. I had to retrain it to get it to work properly using the built-in mic. When I had to use the built-in mic on my MacBook Air because I forgot the Mic at home, it could barely understand anything I said. I used a Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000 USB headset/mic on my MacBook Air. Also, the profile is tied to your hardware. Accidentally load another person’s profile and you will see accuracy degrade. Before you can even use Dragon Dictate, you will have to calibrate the system by reading some text while it learns your speaking style and pronunciation.ĭragon saves your profile and loads it each time it runs. Since the computer is not smart enough to listen and understand or fill in when it mis-hears certain words spoken, we have to help it by training it to hear our voice and understand our speech styles. Voice Commands for Dragon Dictate Setup: Read this for Me Please It often just types the words “spelling mode” instead of entering that mode. There is also a spelling mode for things like spelling strange or unrecognized names. Sometimes, instead of switching from dictation mode, it actually typed the words “command mode”.

First, you have to tell the program to enter voice command mode by saying “Command Mode”. We had very spotty results with all of these voice commands. For example, if you say “Search Google for notebooks” it should open the default browser to the Google home page and perform a search for the word “notebooks”. With Dragon Dictate the user is supposed to be able to control menus, click buttons, and do other system activities. If you are at all self-conscious, you will have to get over it or find an isolated place to use the program. It feels weird using the program when others are around. Version 2.0.3 should not have this problem, but it did in out tests.įinally, there is the pride issue. But the support site claims it would only happen with an older version. Our slow down did happen while using it with Word. However, we did find that in a previous release there was an issue with using Dragon Dictate with Microsoft Word.

We reached out to Nuance to find out if they had a solution, but they did not respond. Our only solution was to shut down the program and restart it. There could be a memory leak in the program. It then slows to the point where sometimes you say a phrase and have to wait ten seconds for it to show up on the screen. For about five average paragraphs it responds within a second or two of your speaking. Compared to the instant response of pressing a key and seeing that character show up on the screen, Dragon feels slow when working right.Īfter a period of usage, Dragon Dictate 2.0 slows way down. Saying what you are want to type and having it show up sometimes a second or more after you say it is odd. I went to the Milwaukee Zoo capitalize that yesterday period For example, if you plan to include a proper noun in the middle of a sentence, instead of just saying … For capitalization you will have to say “Capital Z”. Notice having to say the word “numeral” before the numbers 2 and 0 and having to say the punctuation between 2 and 0 and at the end of the line. To get the following result …ĭragon Dictate 2.0 handles basic speech recognition well.ĭragon Dictate numeral 2 period numeral 0 handles basic speech recognition well period One thing the user must remember to do is add punctuation. Pretty soon we were working at a decent pace. It took some time to get used to the way it works, but after a few sessions using it for all typing needs, we got the hang of it. We found that, if you talk somewhat deliberately and clearly, that Dragon Dictate 2.0 works well for simple dictation. The proofreading tool helps the user find their mistakes. It will also read text to the user with text-to-speech capability. This new version updated the recognition engine and added simpler commands. He also previously highlighted the iOS version which is only voice recognition and offers no device control. Our own Xavier Lanier gave the old version a whirl a year and half ago. The Mac version of Nuance’s speech recognition program was formerly called MacSpeech. While the program is much better than it was ten years ago, it still has a steep learning curve for the user who plans to not only talk to type but also control the computer 100% with the application. When I recently had a thumb injury that made typing painful, I took the opportunity to give the $179.99 Mac version of this program a try. At that time the speech recognition engine was about 85-90% accurate to my best recollection. I first attempted to use Dragon Naturally Speaking for Windows more than a decade ago. Dragon Dictate 2.0 for Mac from Nuance is a speech recognition program that allows the user to enter text using a microphone instead of a keyboard.

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