FREE Alternative to Dragon Naturally Speaking

[happymac.support]

Hi,

Is there any free software that can be used as an alternative to
Dragon Naturally Speaking?

Thanx

 

[Ken Blake]

Is there any free software that can be used as an alternative to
Dragon Naturally Speaking?

This is not a Windows XP question, and really doesn't belong here, but I'll
answer quickly.

First, note that Dragon Naturally Speaking is only one of several commercial
products that do voice recognition.

Second, voice recognition is a very difficult technology to provide. Dragon
Naturally Speaking is one of the better products on the market, and even
that is not good enough for regular use, in my view. I played with it for a
while a year or so ago, and eventually gave it up.

So, if there were any free voice recognition products (I'm not aware of any)
they would probably be even worse, and not at all useful.

One day this will work well, and we'll all probably be using it, but not
yet.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi,

Is there any free software that can be used as an alternative to
Dragon Naturally Speaking?

Thanx

As noted, if it were free, it would not likely be very good. Voice
recognition is very complex - which means it takes a lot of work to
implement. Do you work for free?

And with English, technically, voice recognition can *never* work properly.
There are too many factors like homonyms and accents that software can
simply not evaluate. This is why it isn't relied on in commercial
applications.

VR can be used effectively if one person trains both the software and
themselves, but the results still have to be reviewed.

HTH
-pk

 

[happymac.support]

This is not a Windows XP question, and really doesn't belong here, but I'll
answer quickly.

First, note that Dragon Naturally Speaking is only one of several commercial
products that do voice recognition.

Second, voice recognition is a very difficult technology to provide. Dragon
Naturally Speaking is one of the better products on the market, and even
that is not good enough for regular use, in my view. I played with it for a
while a year or so ago, and eventually gave it up.

So, if there were any free voice recognition products (I'm not aware of any)
they would probably be even worse, and not at all useful.

One day this will work well, and we'll all probably be using it, but not
yet.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I understand that VR is not always
accurate but Dragon Naturally Speaking has received some good feedback
and it has worked for a lot of people. Anyway, is there another
commercial alternative to Dragon?

 

[Ken Blake]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I understand that VR is not always
accurate but Dragon Naturally Speaking has received some good feedback
and it has worked for a lot of people. Anyway, is there another
commercial alternative to Dragon?

Googling Voice REcognition gets 21,000,000 hits. Not all of these are
software alternatives, but some are. Check them out.

 

[Mark Conrad]

As noted, if it were free, it would not likely be very good. Voice
recognition is very complex - which means it takes a lot of work to
implement. Do you work for free?

And with English, technically, voice recognition can *never* work properly.
There are too many factors like homonyms and accents that software can
simply not evaluate. This is why it isn't relied on in commercial
applications.

VR can be used effectively if one person trains both the software and
themselves, but the results still have to be reviewed.

I agree with all that.

Having used Dragon ever since its inception, when it was called "Dragon
Dictate", all varieties of voice recognition still have big problems.

Not the least of these problems is how to justify the high cost of the
'better' voice recognition programs.

The medical version of Dragon, version 9.5 that runs on Vista, still
lists at $1,200 which is a lot of money.

Any productive uses of that program are few and far between.


To the OP:

For experimenting with Dragon, the so-called "Preferred" version at $200
is ideal, it is not too costly and does not have all the drawbacks of
the low end 'cheapy' version, which is called the "Standard" version.

'Preferred' is sold almost everywhere, at Office Depot for example.


As others have posted, voice recognition software is one area where it
does not pay to 'think cheap', as you will just get frustrated with the
poor results you get from the free and low-cost alternatives.

Mark-

 

[Plato]

Is there any free software that can be used as an alternative to
Dragon Naturally Speaking?

No, none exists, even the pay for ones aren't that "perfect".

 

[happymac.support]

No, none exists, even the pay for ones aren't that "perfect".

--http://www.bootdisk.com/

Amazingly, I did find a free alternative that has the same base
function as Dragon. Microsoft Office XP 2002's Speech Recognition
worked like a charm. It got about 75% of the stuff I said right. You
have to train the computer to understand your voice by going through
several training sessions. The more you train the more its accurate.
You can enable the feature by following these instructions:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306537

 

[Mike Scirocco]

Amazingly, I did find a free alternative that has the same base
function as Dragon. Microsoft Office XP 2002's Speech Recognition
worked like a charm. It got about 75% of the stuff I said right. You
have to train the computer to understand your voice by going through
several training sessions. The more you train the more its accurate.
You can enable the feature by following these instructions:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306537

Do you know of any performance comparisons? I found these: Dragon came
out looking pretty good.

http://aginggrandparents.suite101.com/article.cfm/review__dragon_naturally_speaking
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=r...OSCYTpCzHZynDCjzQ&sig2=9XQqp6dsKe9MjXLPdNqv6A

Mike