Voice recognition primer?

[singin_intherain]

Would anyone be indulgent enough to give me an overview of the voice recognition options? Is there voice recognition software now that would reasonably transcribe narrative I dictate, rather then just commands? If so, would it work on MAC or PC or both?

[philquad36]

if you mean speech to text? yes
dragon software by scansoft is very good at this, although you only get back what you put in. but with a bit of time and effort and a lot of dictating you can do everything.

i used to be able to control my whole computer via voice from start to shut down.

[bob clark]

Hi Singin,

Microsoft has free voice recognition software (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/moskowitz_02september23.mspx)that you can download and use.

If you have any Office XP software installed it makes it easier but it's not necessary.

The free version isn't the easiest to learn how to use but it can be done. I tried it out and it works well.

But the easiest way would be to buy a retail program like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

You can't use PC software on a Mac or vice-versa. You can share certain files between the different Operating Systems because both OS have certain document and file converters built into them.

Check out the above link, read about it and test out the voice recognition software.

Most voice recognition software will put you through a short training exercise to create a personal voice profile. It's training the software to understand your voice and its peculiarities. This is usually all that's needed but as you use the programs you can train it to recognize individual words and phrases that it may be having trouble with.

I use the MS software with another program (Shoot 1.6.4) when I flight sim and it works 100% accurately. I'm quite surprised at how well it works. And I tested out its "speech to text" and "text to speech" capabilities and it worked rather well with that too.

[Aly]

There is an extremely basic version of Dragon that comes with Microsoft Word. You have to figure out how to turn it on and use it. I bought the preferred version and like it even though I just know the basics of how to use it.

[Lewis]

This is a good thread to read through:
http://carecure.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13080

The best voice recognition software is Dragon NaturallySpeaking by Nuance. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is only available for the PC. ViaVoice (no longer under development) is a similar program, although not as good IMHO, for Macs. This program was created by IBM but is now owned by Nuance. iListen has also been referred to as an option for Macs (you'll find a link in the thread above).

[retusn]

What package do the 411 people use. is it available to the masses?