Cragside Blog

Voice recognition software has improved rapidly over the last couple of years.  Gone are the days of spending weeks training the package to your voice, now the initial enrolment takes only a few minutes.

Combine this with high quality microphones, some of which utilize Bluetooth and DECT technology, and you have a efficient system fro producing text.

Dictation can be direct into pacakges such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook and some web browsers.  In addition, the PC can be controlled by voice commands to launch applications.

In the current version (version 10), you can even say commands such as “search google for elephants” or “search ebay for mini” and it will launch the appropriate application and carry out the search.

Once you have a good set of voice files (and this doesn’t take too long these days), you can dictate at around 100 to 120 words per minute, which is much faster than most of us can type.  Typically, a good touch typist will average around 60 words per minute.

Whether you have problems using a keyboard or just a slow typist, packages such as Dragon Naturally Speaking are worth a serious look.