Dragon preferred vs. professional?

[JayColorado]

I'm currently using Dragon NaturallySpeaking preferred, and I'd like to get some feedback on the advantages of using the professional version. I understand it is supposed integrate better with Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, but what are the other real advantages? Has anyone seen a dramatic increase in accuracy or ease of dictating when switching to the professional version?

Thanks,

J.

[C5_Since_1983]

Jay,

I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional for a number of years. From the information I have read on different Dragon Naturally Speaking forums, the accuracy of preferred and professional should be the same. They both use the same speech engine. The primary difference between the two is that professional gives you the ability to create custom commands that can be very useful and time-saving.

Check out this forum where your question has been asked and answered many times.
http://forum.knowbrainer.com/list.php?f=2

Bruce

[HeathQuad]

The major difference between preferred and professional is the ability to make custom commands for tedious tasks.

For example every program at my work is password-protected so every time you log in to anything you have to type a username and password then mouse click the login key. But for example after making a custom command for me to login to our payroll system all I have to say is "Start Payroll" and it will type in my username, press the tab key, type in my password, press the login key and carry me to the starting screen for payroll.

Another good example someone is taking a full days of vacation for a certain day with preferred you've would have to say "tab five", "press enter", type in the vacation code, "tab", type in the number of hours, say click add, say OK, and then say save schedule, approximately 7 steps to get this done with preferred but with professional and a custom command all I have to say is "eight hours vacation" and all of that is done for me in about three seconds.

So for productivity, ease of use, and the automation of tedious task professional is much better to go with if you're willing to learn how to do command writing if you can afford to do it. It has made my life much easier at work and it also impresses the other coworkers because I can do a lot of things faster than they can with the command writing feature.
Heath

[Lewis]

Aside from commands, I don't believe (can't confirm this) the Preferred Edition includes the ability to fine tune your vocabulary by editing Word Properties. This has come to the rescue on several locations for me. In the end, it's all about accuracy. Editing the Word Properties allows you to force some behaviors with certain words.

For instance: in reference to a boat I sail, every time I used to say "Martin 16" it would sometimes type martin lowercase. This is a very often occurrence and I very rarely use "16" when I'm not talking about the boat. To solve this, I edited the Word Properties of "16" and made it so whenever a word preceded it, it would be capitalized. This is just a simple example of how the Word Properties can be edited and utilized.

[JayColorado]

Thanks guys, this stuff is really helpful! Keep it coming...