Is Voice Recognition Ready for typical PC Users?

i tried out voice recognition back in 1999. a version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. it wasn’t cool… i took the software back to walmart and got my money back… (that’s why i bought it at walmart… in case it didn’t work out i knew i’d get my money back :D ). back then i thought ‘man it would be so nice not to have to type and simply be able to dictate to my computer.’ i mean if it worked with very few and rare flaws i can just imagine how much time it would save. i can think & talk a heck of a lot faster than i can type. and i’m not a slow typer either… well i type about 60wpm with 1 error or so… and that’s just cause i’m i stop and go typer most of the time (from programming) i don’t do documents or transcribing very often at all.

so anyone out there using Voice Recognition? if so PLEASE post some comments on your experiences… good or bad. and especially if you’ve tried and VR with programming!

o btw, i wondering if something like a 1.4Gz P4 Windows XP 256MB Ram with a … i dunno prob 32 bit sound card is sufficient hardware to really be ok with today’s VR software.

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This entry was written by Buster, posted on 6/13/2005 at 2:57 pm, filed under General, Programming. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

3 Comments

  1. Dubz
    Posted 6/14/2005 at 8:26 am | Permalink

    I have your almost exact circumstance. I tried it last back in 99, and haven’t since. I hope it has come alot farther than it was at that point… haha here is a snippet of what my first experience was like…

    Computer says: Say cat.
    James says: Cat.
    Computer types: fat.
    James says: CAT!
    Computer types: fat.fat
    James says: no stupid… I didn’t mean type it, CAT I said!!
    Computer types: low student I send and lean type it fat I sad
    James says: are you freakin’ serious stupid ass piece of…
    Computer types: argue leakin’ series student as peace of..
    James says: !@#$ off **throws headset down**

    haha

    Dubz

  2. buster
    Posted 6/14/2005 at 11:44 am | Permalink

    hahaha… funny my experience wasn’t as bad but man i wish u woulda recorded that on video… hahaha

  3. Casey
    Posted 6/17/2005 at 2:21 pm | Permalink

    Man, I laughed for 10 minutes on that one, James. I can just picture that happening.

    Anyway. . .

    I don’t see how VR could ever really be very good at dictation. Too many homonyms in English. Like in James’ hilarious example, peace and piece sound exactly the same (unless VR software gets so good it can decide on which word to use by the context). But I have tried a VR program that took commands, like say “minimize” and the active window would minimize. Stuff like that. It was probably around the same time you tried yours (I see a trend), and it pretty much sucked. It was fun for about 10 minutes, and it was a free trial, so at least I didn’t waste any money or have to return anything.