Try Dictating Instead of Typing

I've mentioned the program Dragon Naturally Speaking version 10 on my website, so I thought I would give you a more in-depth review of this product here on my blog. I am actually using Dragon to compose this blog entry.

Dragon works great with Microsoft Word if you have this program. I have not been able to test it on other word processors to see how effective it is. The price sure is right for this product, and I might mention that for $37.95 you get the program as well as the headset that has a microphone built into it. Some of you may prefer to do your writing with pen and pencil before transferring it to the computer. This program would be excellent for that because all you need to do is pick up the paper you have written and talk it right into the computer. I am actually writing this entry by just talking into the microphone. I did not do any pre-writing.

So far the only corrections I have had to make are for the money amount above and just three or four other minor corrections. There isn't a lot of difficulty in setting the program up on your computer. It took me less than half an hour to get things set. You do have to read in initial narration piece when you first start up the program. Over time the program is supposed to learn how you talk and become more accurate.

On a technical note, this program will require at least one megabyte of RAM. I am running the program on Windows XP. If you have a really old computer, you may have some problems with this program. I think my PC is at least five years old, and it is running quite well.

I have found with this program that I can spin out a lot more words, but I'm not so sure that I am doing my best writing. I should say composing instead of writing because I'm not actually writing it all, I'm just talking. Although the program does make some mistakes it is so cool to see how many words you can so rapidly put down in your word processor. It just doesn't seem to be quite as hard work to do as typing on the keyboard.

I don't think we’re there yet, but I think that in the future people will not be typing in text messages to their cell phones. They will just talk the text message into the cell phone and send it on its way. Imagine how much faster this could be then texting is even now.