Do you find voice recognition useful?

I haven’t used it for writing a paper or anything like that, but if i was taking notes about an idea i think it would be great. Being able to get your train of thought down without losing the natural flow of the idea is key Voice recognition is also great for issuing commands to a device. This can dramatically help the usability of a device or application where there are tons or options to the user but you dont want to clutter up the UI or you dont want the user to have to click a bunch to find what they wanted.

I use Naturally Speaking on a daily basis and find extraordinarily useful. I use it for first draft writing as well as short transcription work. You need to have a very good quality microphone, but once you do it hardly ever misses a word. I can get well over two hundred words per minute – something that I cannot get close to when typing.

I can use my BlackBerry to record notes, email them to my computer and the Nuance software brings it straight into Word© for me. I use it on here quite often if I am at my own computer. It also reads text aloud, useful if I want to review something while driving or similar. I have been using their products since their first release. In the old days you had to spend many hours “training” the software, now it works straight out of the box.

I bought it, tried to install it, but obviously this machine is too old. So I sent it back to Tiger Direct for a refund. Too bad too, as I could use something doesn’t make as many errors as my typing does. I still can’t stop looking at the keys when I type. (I can type without looking, but I really slow down).

Maybe I’ll buy it again when I upgrade to a new machine.

i tried it but i prefer the vista/windows7 voice recognition. it is easier to use and more integrated with the system.

@ragingloli Interesting. Most of what I’ve read says that DNS is better. Do you use voice recognition regularly?

not regularly no.
but i also think the recognition abilities are better
i can lean back and talk to it and it recognises it
i can speak to it in accents, even mid-sentence and it recognises it
i can sing and it recognises it.
with DNS i constantly had to lean forward and repeat what i said over and over again.

there are some drawbacks though
you can’t configure voice commands which means if you use software where the commands don’t work you are pretty much forced to use the mouse again.

but over all, yes, i like the windows voice recognition more.

When i can speak my proper tongue , not have to englishify it up . Then and only then will i like voice recognition,

The only time I use voice recognition and find it useful is when I’m calling someone from my cell phone with my bluetooth headset.

I am doing some work with Dragon and looking for conversations about voice recognition and Dragon Naturally speaking
It’s a solid product and if you’re interested, here are some really compelling stories from people who’ve used it— http://tinyurl.com/yjxfmmp
Cheers everyone!

—Mark