Dictation Pro Speech Recognition Software

Having difficulty in typing your documents? 

Do you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, arthritic problems, sight impairment or perhaps, like me severe laziness complicated by “fat finger syndrome” and just plain crappy typing skills (like me)?

Well, speak and let Dictation Pro type for you.  Prepare your letters, reports, e-mails just by speaking into a microphone. A good-quality headset is required.  The Deskshare blurb does not go into detail as to which. Supposedly, Dictation Pro is fast and easy with no conflicts with Chrome “voice command browsing”.

“Type the documents with minimum keystrokes and mouse clicks” means they haven’t been totally eliminated. Still, it’s free. Add the frequently used words, expressions, and technical terms to the vocabulary set of the software. Inputting text by speech is three times faster by speaking than typing and unless you’re like me (the guy with “fat finger syndrome”), it has to be better than typing. It’s also the perfect solution for a *certain* person (Zubaz will remain nameless) in SD Tech Support.

The stated goal of the technology is to be able to produce a system that can recognize all words spoken by any person with 100% accuracy. 

“An initial training session makes Dictation Pro learn to interpret your voice and speech characteristics and increase the dictation accuracy.” – Deskshare

This is true for all voice recognition software. Dragonspeak has the least.

Dictation Pro includes commands for formatting, deleting, and copying the words and passages. The commands are touted as

“easy to remember and designed to simplify and speed up editing by voice.”

Dictation Pro claims to allow a better control of commands although they don’t say “better than product X”. Instead of using mouse to select or a keyboard to type the shortcuts, just speak the command and Dictation Pro executes it for you. It also claims to be 100% safe.

“Features:

Speech to Text

• Say words and watch them appear on your screen
• Create documents, reports, and messages just by speaking
• Improve Recognition Accuracy
• Use correction commands to fix incorrectly recognized words
• Multiple users can work on one computer by creating individual voice profiles
• Use voice training to adapt to your speaking style
• Create custom voice commands to insert frequently used text.
• Word Processing Features
• Revise your text with powerful word processing features such as cut, copy, paste, delete, change font, style, etc.
• Save your documents in DOC, DOCX, RTF, PDF, and TXT format”  - Deskshare

My take:

Sometimes I can recommend on software or a gadget wholeheartedly. Sometimes I can’t. I try to be honest about it. For my dictation needs I use my iPad and it’s phenomenal. It’s the free Dragonspeak app.

I didn’t install and run the software because I don’t have (nor need) a headset/microphone. So I hunted for reviews and thought to compare them for you. I couldn’t, as there aren’t any. Their support forum has one question and it’s from July.

If you have a disability, trying something for free can’t hurt. For those running Windows who really need it, I can wholeheartedly recommend Dragonspeak’s software. It’s simply the best.

The free version differs from the purchased one as to features provided, but just what the differences are, I cannot find on the website, I also can’t find user comments nor reviews by c|net, etc. So, while I can cite what they write about the software, it’s basically “give it a try” and that it’s probably better than Vista’s and 7’s native dictation software. At least it’s free.

Support: Windows Vista and Windows 7. Nothing mentioned on the website about x486 nor x64.

Source:

http://www.deskshare.com/dictation.aspx