Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 Preferred

By Dale Farris, Secretary Golden Triangle PC Club August 2005 Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 is the most accurate speech recognition product ScanSoft has ever developed - delivering up to 99% accuracy! No other product delivers the power, accuracy and ease-of-use that make Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred the ideal solution for the PC enthusiast or home office user! Talk to your computer and your words instantly and accurately appear in Microsoft Word and Excel, Corel WordPerfect, and virtually all Windows-based applications. Listen to incoming e-mail and documents read aloud. Search the Web by speaking URLs and links. Use dictation shortcuts that enable you to insert blocks of texts or bitmaps-such as your name, title, and signature-with a single voice command. Dictate directly into a PC or any ScanSoft-approved handheld digital recorder. A noise canceling microphone is even included. Now is the time to use the power of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred, and forever improve the way you work with your PC. Simply install Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred, and nearly every Windows application on your PC can be controlled by voice. Complete integration with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, including the 2003 editions, with desktop, laptop and Tablet PC systems supported. What's New in Version 8? Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8's record breaking accuracy improvements make using speech recognition easier than ever before. Version 8 also includes powerful command creation features, allowing the software to meet the needs of any user. Complete mobility is available through the most popular handheld devices, including more digital recorders and PDAs. Plus, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 fully supports enterprise deployments, from a native MSI installer to complete workstation roaming. Whether you're looking to reduce transcription costs, use a PC hands free, create documents faster or just have more fun with your PC, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 is the product for you. A Breakthrough In Accuracy Expanded language models and improved acoustic training techniques deliver up to 99% accuracy. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 boasts one of the largest accuracy increase of any release in the history of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Enterprise Ready Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 makes your user profile available anywhere on the network, and automatically synchronizes updates and adaptations centrally. Use the new Native MSI Installer to install Dragon NaturallySpeaking through a network to multiple client machines. Support For More Devices Now you can dictate into a Palm Tungsten, as well as a digital recorder or Pocket PC, and have your recording transcribed by Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 when you synch with your PC. Instant Formatting With Smart Formatting, you can specify how Dragon NaturallySpeaking formats dates, measurements and acronyms to meet your requirements. You can even establish the specific configuration of any word, such as capitalization or spacing. Improved Commands With Smart Text & Graphics Shortcuts, you can instantly fill out entire templates with unique information. And with Smart Commands, you can change the action of a voice command depending on the location of the cursor. Custom Vocabulary Tools The simplified Vocabulary Builder makes customizing your vocabulary faster, easier, and more powerful. And an improved Vocabulary Editor makes it easier than ever before to fine tune custom vocabularies. Easier to Use with a Handheld Device With Multiple Acoustics you can now use a single vocabulary for your microphone and handheld device profiles. Key Features A Breakthrough In Speech Recognition Accuracy Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8's improved speech engine is 25% more accurate than version 7. Integrated With Your Favorite Applications Simply install Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred, and nearly every Windows application on your PC can be controlled by voice. Complete integration with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, including the 2003 editions, with desktop, laptop and Tablet PC systems supported. Navigate Your Desktop By Voice Launch or switch applications, save or print documents, and more, using menu commands for all standard Windows-based applications. Get Started Quickly Teach the software to recognize your voice in as few as five minutes. Easy Proofing Say "Play that back," and the software will play back what you just said and highlight the corresponding text for easy proofreading. Eliminate "ums" and "ahs" from your dictation The built-in Nothing But Speech (NBS) technology increases accuracy by filtering out inadvertent fillers and sounds between words. Use spelling, numbers, commands only, and dictation only modes Increase your accuracy when completing specific tasks by voice by using optional spelling, numbers, commands only, and dictation only modes. Control the mouse by voice Use multiple methods-including commands like "Move Mouse upper left"-to work hands-free. Work on the Web by voice Search the Web, access information, and navigate Web pages by speaking URLs and links. Voice Commands Do Even More Say "insert signature" and your e-mail signature and logo automatically appears! Be Productive On-The-Go Use your Pocket PC, palmOne Tungsten or digital recorder to capture your dictation, and let Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred automatically transcribe it. Palm OS Dragon Recorder software included free! Format and Edit by Voice Yes, you really can use your PC completely by voice, including formatting and editing. Select some text and say "Bold that" and the text is bolded. Say "Make it bigger" and the font size is increased. Creating e-mail and documents couldn't be any faster or easier. Say It Naturally Unique Natural Language Commands mean you don't have to memorize complex instructions. In Excel for example if you say "total that column," the figures will be summed without requiring any complex formulas. Avoid Repetitive Strain Injuries By using your voice to control the PC and create documents, you reduce exposure to repetitive stress injuries. If you suffer from arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred will change the way you work with a PC. Natural Punctuation When dictating casual writing styles, you no longer have to say "period" and "comma." Listen to text in the most human-sounding voice available Hear any text, such as incoming e-mail, read aloud using Text-to-Speech (RealSpeak 2 text-to-speech software). Import or export your user profile Save your profile on a portable storage device, such as a CD-R or USB drive. Recommendations For years, Dragon NaturallySpeaking has been the best voice dictation product. Now version 8 of the application fulfills its predecessors' promise by delivering lots of little improvements that add up to much greater usability. Not only does the software present a more-useful-than-ever list of alternatives when you tell it that it has made a mistake, but now it allows you to correct your own verbal mistakes by selecting the error and then saying what you actually meant. The program will even let you talk relatively fast, even on older machines. The program's included noise-canceling headset adds still more value to this powerful, impressive program. Version 8 of Dragon Naturally Speaking represents the greatest advances in natural-language, voice-controlled applications, and anyone with any degree of interest in moving away from the keyboard for data entry will want to seriously consider this important program. Price $199.00 retail price $149.99 upgrade price System Configuration Requirements Intel Pentium III 500MHz processor (or equivalent AMD processor) Win XP (SP1) Home or Pro, XP Tablet Edition, ME, 2000 (SP4) 256MB RAM 500MB free hard disk space Creative Sound Blaster 16 or equivalent sound card supporting 16-bit recording IE 5 or higher CD-ROM drive (required for installation) ScanSoft-approved noise-canceling headset microphone (not included with upgrades) Speakers (required for playback of recorded speech and text-to-speech features) A Web connection is required for activation About ScanSoft, Inc. ScanSoft, Inc. develops digital imaging software that enables users to leverage the power of their scanners, digital cameras, and other electronic devices. The product line now includes several well known applications, in addition to OmniPage Pro 14, including OmniPage Pro Scan Suite Plus, OmniForm 4, PagisPro, TextBridge Pro, , PageKeeper, Kai's PhotoSoap2, Kai's SuperGoo, Kai's PowerShow, PhotoFactory, along with PaperPort Deluxe. If many of these programs sound familiar, you would be right in thinking these used to be developed and sold by other companies. At this point, ScanSoft now dominates this market with their full line of programs, many formerly developed by other companies, and only time will tell if this multi-product line will merge into fewer applications. With this dominance, don't be surprised to find ScanSoft software bundled with newly purchased scanners or digital cameras in the future. Also, Microsoft has licensed ScanSoft OCR software for use in future Microsoft products, a feat that will be of keen interest to any computer owner. Contact ScanSoft, Inc. 9 Centennial Drive Peabody, Massachusetts 01960 978-977-2000 800-443-7077 FAX 978-977-2412 www.scansoft.com