Dragon speaking

I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking and it does what it claims (which I believe is now 98% accuracy). You cannot, however, just install it and expect to get that straight away. Both you and the program need some training. The user has to learn to use the system and, perhaps, adjust his way of speaking a little to get the best out of it. It sometimes feels as if one is addressing a slightly hard-of-hearing child who is not paying full attention but this feeling wears off fairly soon. The system itself has to learn your accent and speech patterns and this takes several sessions reading the carefully pre-prepared texts. Once you have done this and have got into the manner of speaking distinctly and a little more carefully than you may do normally, things quickly speed up. It helps to get fully familiar with the verbal commands ("Select last word/sentence/paragraph", "Delete that", "Spell that" &c) and the punctuation commands. It is much more like dictation than 'natural speech' but once you and the program have accustomed each other to each other's idiosyncrasies, it can save a great deal of time, especially if one is used to speaking 'off the cuff'. The program, of course, has all the patience in the world. Some people find that they get on very well with it; others (according to the reviews I have read on Amazon and elsewhere) clearly don't. I suspect that it is a matter of patience and WANTING to learn how to use it more than anything else! I hope that helped!

The majority of the reviews that I've heard about voice recognition software has been pretty good. However, I've used the voice recognition on my cellular phone and I find that I personally have a hard time with it. I think that it would be perfect for someone that does not have much of an accent, but that isn't me at all. My personal accent is a weird combination of a northern drawl and a hillbilly accent, so while it will recognize some of the words that I say, most of the time I end up having to choose between several words that it thought I might have said.

I hope some people answer because I have been wondering the same thing! Sorry I cant be of help but I really want to know also for my husband. =)