Software
How to become a Dictator
My fingers were sore, but not any more!
These days I seem to spend all day typing using my computer keyboard, prodding at my iPhone and pressing buttons on my TV remote control. It may be exercise, but it’s certainly not the type I really enjoy.
So I was quite excited to read a review of Mac Speech Dictate in my latest Mac magazine. The last time I used any type of voice recognition software was way back when Windows 95 with the latest big thing. I remember it being awful, with most of its output being great comedy value, but not much use in the real world.
After reading the glowing review in the Mac magazine I hastily ordered myself as fresh new copy from Amazon. It’s not cheap, coming in at just under £200. For your money you get the usual CD installation software and also a special noise cancellation microphone headset. Which I guess is quite important. You don’t really want your speech recognition software to pick up someone behind you swearing as you’re trying to dictate out a very important e-mail to a client.
Installation was swift and easy, it took only about 10 minutes to load up the software and then you are taken through a set up process.
You’re asked to read out several paragraphs of text into your microphone, the software then uses this to adjust to your voice profile in the hope that it will produce accurate results once completed.
I have to say it was a very quick and easy process, it only took me about four minutes and then my computer pinged to tell me it was all done.
Of course the big test was trying it out. So I tentatively opened up Apple Mail and decided to try and dictate a message to my loved one.
You could say I was like a kid in a sweet shop, I was immediately impressed at the speed and the accuracy of the recognition software. Of course the odd stray word and miscalculation made its way through (for instance in the very first line of this article it spelt ‘sore’ as ‘saw’ but hey, how is it to know the difference?) but that’s to be expected.
Oddly, the one thing I thought I would find the easiest - talking into a microphone instead of having to type into a keyboard - is probably the hardest to get used to. I’m so used to typing into a keyboard and following my train of thought as I do, that staring into space and talking into a microphone feels oddly disconnected. I find that now I have to write a short list of points before I start blathering on into the microphone or the result is a complete mess of words. Some might say what’s new.
This entire article was dictated using the software and was relatively easy to do, albeit strange and consisting of a few long pauses in the process.
So all in all I could probably give it a 7/10 with the -3 points for the time it takes me to pick up using the software rather than any deficiency in the software itself.
Highly recommended.
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