Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional

Features of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional

Auto Transcribe

This is one of the cooler features of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional. If you own a digital voice recorded that can output to a PC you can simply speak into your recorded, from anywhere, and save it to the transcription folder inside Dragon. Then Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional can automatically transcribe the spoken recording into a written document for you.

Accuracy

I have used speech recognition before with other applications, such as Voice Buddy for gaming. Typically the process of using voice recognition requires training. Lots and lots of training. However, Nuance was able to build Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional so that it requires absolutely no training. You don't have to read any scripts. Sure you can read a very short script to Dragon for improved accuracy, but it is not required.

Application Support

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional supports basically any application or web page with a text input field. You can use the pro version in the entire Office suite as well as IE, Mozilla and Thunderbird. You can voice control virtually any application on your computer.

Intuitive

One of the coolest features is how easy to use the application is. If at any point I need help figuring out how to do something I can simply say "give me help" or "what can I say" and interactive applications will launch to assist me. You can also use simple commands inside office applications like "select that" or "bold that".

Smart Software

Dragon continually learns your voice and pronunciation as you go along. Each time you say a word that requires correction the software learns how you said the word and what you meant. For instance if I say "You're going to love this software" and Dragon hears "Your going to love this software" I simply say "select Your" and choose the correct usage form the corrections list.

Wireless Support

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Professional also supports some Bluetooth headsets so you can get up and move as you work, without having to stop typing. Many headsets are supported in both wireless and wired versions. Dragon also ships with a good quality headset and microphone so you are ready to go out of the box.

Custom Commands & Macros

Possibly one of the most useful features is the ability to make custom commands. You can customize shortcuts with your own name and train Dragon to execute them on your command. You can also program complex macros requiring multiple keystroke both in sequence and at the same time.

Network Support

The Pro version of Dragon 9 is fully network supported. When deployed in an office environment the application can be installed on a main server. This allows each user to have their own custom dictionaries and commands that they can access form any client on the network no matter where they are. This is particularly important in environments like medical offices where you might need to input data in multiple rooms.

Ummm...Don't Type That

Until you start using voice recognition, you might not realize how frequently we say um and ah. Thankfully, Dragon 9 Pro is able to improve accuracy by not transcribing unintended words like that into your document.

More Features

You could literally write a book on the features of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9. Check the Nuance website for more information on the complete feature set of the software.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 in Use

Installation

Installing Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 was very easy and straight forward on my Windows XP test machine. Simply put in the CD and follow the steps. Installation took about 10 minutes.

Working with Dragon

Once installed, I went directly to work with Dragon without going through any training of the software. I was able to work with absolutely no problems. The software at first had a few problems with my pronunciation of words that are spelled differently but sound the same, such as they and day, there and they're and so on. The really cool part is that as I corrected the incorrect words, Dragon 9 Pro learned its mistakes. After a few paragraphs I could say the words again that were incorrect to begin with and Dragon got them correct. I also thought it was very useful that I could say words such as 100 degrees, and Dragon would insert the correct symbol for degrees. When working in Word I could enter titles and sub-titles with proper capitalization by saying simple phrases like "cap that". If I wanted to bold one word out of a sentence, like "dog" I could simply say "select dog". Once the word is selected I could add formatting such as bold by simply saying "bold that".