Voice Recognition software recommendations please

[MorseLady]

My husband has nearly lost the use of his hands through very severe RA and resultant deformity and can barely type and then with his knuckle. He wants to run a genealogy application that requires a lot of input and type letters and I have suggested voice recognition software. Can someone please recommend software which is easy to set up and use as due to his pain and medication he has difficulty learning and remembering and gets upset very easily if things go wrong and is not too good with computers. Not too expensive preferably. I have had a look on Download.com but knowing nothing at all about this field do not know which trials to download. Is voice recognition now reliable?

The computer is a 3ghz P4 with lmb RAM and 160GB HDD running XP Home SP2 and the sound card is onboard and is a good one. Not sure what hardware Voice Recognition uses but the computer does have a voice fax modem which is not being used as we are on broadband.

[Zonie]

I have clients using "Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred 8.0 Software" whom seem to be satisfied with it. I am not sure of any others at the moment but will check farther into it.

[confus-ed]

I suppose IBM's ViaVoice is the other 'main choice' (there are lots of folks in this field, but this & dragon are the leaders).

..Is voice recognition now reliable?.. - err umm .. 'not far off', a whole lot better than you expect I guess, but no system is perfect, & they all take 'training' to achieve accuracy ..

[Atodini]

ML,

I have a friend who is severely affected by Rheumatoid Arthritis, (sadly she's also only 35 years old... and she is using voice recognition software with great success. Her work (as a researcher for a media company) means that she needs to create a great many comprehensive documents on all manner of subjects.

First off she tried Viavoice but was unimpressed, it did work but was less than accurate enough, requiring a fair amount of editing of the document - but now using Dragon Naturally Speaking she's pleased as punch with the results, extremely accurate with very few errors. The program however, is somewhat expensive, around 10 times the cost of Viavoice. Her employer paid over £300.00 for her version (and that is only a "basic" one).

Setting up is simple, but the "training" requires patience. When set up it should do all he needs.

We found that the trick when training the software is all in the way you pronounce the words. It doesn't appear to be very tolerant of broad accents etc. Fortunately she does not have any discernible accent....

What she did find was that she gets the best results wearing a microphone, rather than speaking into a desk mike - she's got a "Sennheiser" throat mike now which works really well.

John

[slgrieb]

I would vote for Dragon too. Just be aware that things like colds (and his emotional state) background noise and so on can cause problems. Get a USB headset and bypass your soundcard. Top brands like Logitech or Plantronics can be found for $40 or so.

[Zonie]

You can the Dragon at Office Max for $199.00 here: http://www.officemax.com/max/solutio...ceeldfgndfhf.0

[Duke of Rezin]

It may even be worth it to contact Dragon and see if they offer a discount for disabled persons.

[Sandwich]

I've never tried ViaVoice , but I started using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 about 11 months ago . in my medical-practice. I have two social workers in two nurse practitioner who trying to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 . you could probably call me the senior user . I've been with it the longest. It requires a concerted effort to train that sounds like your husband would certainly be motivated.

I have medical program that cost 1000 US dollars, however I seen the program at Best Buy the basic program for about 150 US dollars. I've found that if you approach this program has a computer game and learn that . just as if it were a computer game . It works pretty well. Nothing is perfect , dictated this response to you with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and I've had to correct very little.

I wish you a great deal of luck, if you choose to try the program.

[Platypus]

I would second the mention of different results from different microphones. Use of a quality microphone should be very worthwhile in helping VR software get accurate results, and also decent quality sound in the computer - microphone inputs on basic soundcards can be weak and noisy.