Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Review
We have decided to start a new segment regarding gadgetry and the law. If there is a gadget that you would like reviewed that you think would be beneficial to lawyers or law students, or you would like your own gadget reviewed, send us an e-mail and we’ll see what we can do.
Preface: I will be writing this entire blog post with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. I will not be correcting anything, even though it is relatively easy to do so. I feel that this will give you a better idea for what to expect out of the box, so to speak. Okay, I was lying a little bit when I said that I would not be correcting anything. The truth is that Dragon NaturallySpeaking sometimes does not like to put spaces after periods, and if I let it continue doing that, it will drive me crazy.
As you can see, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 voice recognition is fairly accurate after only a few minutes of training. I type faster than most people, but this is certainly transcribing faster than I type.
Positives:
1. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 works quite well in Parallels for OS 10.
2. If you are simply brief in a case or brain dumping and don’t care very much about misspellings or simple typos, this can be a very useful tool.
3. It doesn’t require any kind of special microphone. I’m using this $16 microphone that I purchased on Amazon, which seems to work quite well.
4. When Dragon NaturallySpeaking does misspell a word, taking the time to fix the misspelling actually does help. For instance, as you can see above, it thought that when I said briefing, I actually said brief in. Once I corrected that misspelling, here’s the result: briefing briefing briefing briefing. Not bad, right?
5. Dragon no longer requires the stupid “dragon pad” in order to function, and you can at least transcribe in any window.
There are some negatives:
1. Dragon NaturallySpeaking does not work wonderfully with Microsoft one note. In particular, it refuses to write in any heading area. Additionally,creating lists and boards (that was supposed to save bullets) is very difficult.
2.there is relatively poor interaction with Microsoft Word. In particular, the word correction dialog seems to break constantly.is common to say “select that” only to see no dialogue appear. This is acceptable when you simply want to brain dump, but when you’d actually like to improve the word accuracy, this is a troubling result. The reason for this is that as you correct misspellings, you are actually training the program to better recognize your voice
3. you should almost forget about case names. Watch: Rove V. Wade… oh, well that’s actually an interesting result. sherbet versus Werner. Sturgis versus Crowninshield. you get the idea. We can really hold this against Dragon because surnames are difficult even for humans. With that said, We hear that there is a legal version available, and we are looking forward to reviewing that in the future.
4. Complex commands. there does not seem to be any kind of cheat sheet for the massive amount of commands that are available in Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. At this point, I can’t even remember how to start making a list. it would be very useful if the software came with an instruction PDF the likes of Pages ‘09.
as you can see, the voice-recognition may actually be useful to you for certain tasks though it certainly will not be replacing professional journalism anytime soon. If you get the opportunity to give it a test drive, we recommend it. in order to give it a fair assessment however, make sure you go through the initial training.
All in all, we give it 4/5 Larry’s.
Related posts:
I concur, see http://legalgeekery.com/2009/01/05/dragon-naturally-speaking/
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Joshua Auriemma Reply:
February 10th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
@Andrew Schnitzel, Your citation is all wrong. Totally referencing this comment in my letter of condemnation to the e-board!
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Hi Guys, not to savey with computers. I can’t spell but I can sure talk up a storm. I’m writing a couple book and thought Dragon NS 10 was the ticket. I’ve had 3-4 computer experts try to get it going in the right dirrection, It’ been a disaster. I’m looking for someone in the Dallas area to help me. I have a new laptop (HP Mini) I talk into mic and 5 minutes later some of the works come out. Have any ideas. also I lost the manual. I’m a man with Big problems!!!!! Disco Dave maybe I should just stick to DISCO. Thanks
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I am curious if you have checked out the “Legal” version of Dragon. It’s supposed to better handle legalese and citations. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a thorough review of it. :/
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Found one. Doesn’t really go into citations though.
http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/ttr05092.shtml
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I have been using DNS for years and it has never worked properly in Word [let alone web forms, Outlook or any of the places users might want to go]. I’ve simply gotten into the habit of using Dragon Pad then doing a copy and paste into the target application. That the various owners of DNS have never addressed this problem blows me away.
The recognition model is another pet peeve. Humans compose and think at the phrase level; DNS recognizes at the sentence level. I hate it when software engineers foist off their own limitations on end users. The ultimate goal in any kind of application should be to adapt the software to the way humans work and not the other way around. With all those caveats in place, it does work. I’ve tested my output at 130 words per minute which sure beats my fingers.
This is now a mature application but the devs keep adding to the bloat with nearly useless features without adding to the recognition model or making the HUMAN experience any better.
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I am a huge fan of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and use it daily. I find the interaction with Microsoft Word to be quite good. Also, you may get away with a cheap microphone, but I have gotten better results from higher-quality ones. It does make a difference with regards to accuracy.
Additionally, I run it in parallels desktop. I have found that it doesn’t work very well using the parallels desktop audio device. I have to connect a USB headset directly to it, otherwise there is this weird latency that starts to develop the longer you use the program. (It’s almost as if the sampling rate between the desktop and MacOS X differ, so parallels desktop starts to lag behind as it streams audio from the system). I don’t fault Dragon NaturallySpeaking for this, but parallels desktop.
(I dictated this entire comment with Dragon, only one mistake)
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hey all hello to you
I must tell you the dagon speaking company
is to greedy they think there speach software that is only a
text editor that makes it faster and easy to work in word excel and corel but not in any text editor dosent do html wont work in dreamwever adobe paint works or any and all programs you want to set it up for how ever it dose save hours of type for college
students and easyer in microsoft word wwwwoooo but it dose nothing else and for the standard use typing text they have made the sure it has no usb support for wireless head sets why ? greed !
so you have to step up to there next level 4x more in cost Thats Right $x the cost to get there use wireless head set programe and there head set is very poor quality .so why would we spend 199.00
on a program the dose nothing but text in windows with many mistakes
but nothing else and costs more than a full version of windows 7 that dose it all !!! thats right burn movies,cd”s,picture”s,all office software ,adobe sun java html editors surfing online all firewalls data and everything you could want to do for 130.00 per PC . so i have made my point! DRAGON SPEAKING 10 step up and make the number one chioce wireless opption in all your programs and please stop the rackitiers and proving a commenly use 26 letter a-z go and use just your software and drop the price to 35.00 a pc where it belongs sure it helps older people who cant type easy anymore and college typing much faster for last minute reports and emails not friendly with any other than outlook dosent work in linux and is only good for word outlook excel very little corel so please it dosent work with all programs dose very little no movies no cd”s dosent work ing ex nero dosent work in adobe and the cheap headset in very unconfortable and most have to buy there choice so this should be an opption with or without you are clearly thinking this is user friendly lol it is still very far from perfect!!
infact i call windows one time and can talk word perfect to activate my windows and it gets it perfect frist time never talked into it before so now this brings up mulitable users ,to user friendly any more that standerd version has no multi user or wireless the most use for personal use no commercial use and you make sure they have to step up to the 4x more version shame DRAGON SPEAKING 10 your prices are more than a windows 7 ulitmite O/S
please wake up !!!
thank you for allowing me to post this oh lol this was typed by hand 15 words a min DRAGON SPEAKING 10 NOT SUCH THE GOOD DEAL
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When Naturally Speaking 10 Works it’s fantastic but I have endured a frustrating stream of compatability issues, resulting in periods when the software won’t run or won’t run properly. If you’ve got dedicated IT support in your practice – people whose task it is to resolve IT issues as they arise – sure, give it a go. If, however, you’re buying in IT help, don’t do it; keeping Dragon Naturally Speaking running isn’t worth the the cost or the frustration.
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I am dictating this from DNS version 10 preferred using a $60 RadioShack studio quality uni-directional mic. This is not a computer mic by any means. It is over 9 inches long, less than 1 inch diameter, and has a professional studio grade, detachable heavy-duty cord and three prong plug. it is plugged into my mediocre sound card via a goldplated adapter plug. I hold this mic approximately 6 inches from my mouth and talk at a conversational level. At one time or another I’ve done most of the training and also take great pains to correct mistakes. Personally, I believe that mic selection is extremely critical. There is just no way that a high end studio quality unidirectional mic cannot be better than a cheap computer mic. RadioShack now sells what appears to be a pretty damn good unidirectional mic for about $25. The mic I use was purchased over 12 years ago for $60. It is model number 33 — 3017. They don’t appear to sell it anymore, or maybe I didn’t look hard enough.
In any event I hope my experience will help you get DNS working better. BTW, I corrected about five mistakes while dictating this. The mic is the key IMHO.
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