Voice Recognition Software By janetlynn on Jan 22, 2010 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

My husband saw that I was having to type so many sermon messages for our Pastor and decided to get me Dragon Medical Software. This software is incredible and I honestly thought I really didn't need any speech recognition software, since I am a fast typist any way. Well, I was wrong again.

Dragon's software installs quite easily and also allows you to register and after installation, it takes you immediately to the Nuance.com website to check for any updates.

To use Dragon, you will need a headset and microphone or at least the microphone. When you begin the software, it will walk you through a few steps in testing that it can recognize your microphone and will automatically adjust your sound levels according to your voice. My voice is on the softer side and the settings were just around the half way mark.

Dragon installs a toolbar that you can either have float on your screen or affix it to the top or bottom or other location on your screen. Once you click to turn on your microphone, if you should need to pause it, just tell it to "Go to sleep." When you come back, just say, "wake up". It's SO cool.

Now the software is not perfect, but with constant usage, it will begin to learn your speech pattern and it will become faster over time. When you talk into your microphone though, you need to speak slower than you normally talk to a person. You have to remember the software will hear exactly what you say and will therefore type whatever it hears. So if you slur your words, it will pump out whatever it thinks you said. But that's ok, you can either tell it to, "scratch that" or "spell that" and if you "spell that" a little window will open and allow you to spell the word you are trying to teach it.

Even though this software that I have is mainly for the medical profession, I am using it for my daily transcribing and in typing long articles.

As you speak and the software types, if you pause, it will place a comma or a period. For now, I am telling it where to put my commas and periods or "question mark" or "exclamation mark", because I am also learning as I go along. When you need to go to a new line - just say, "new line" or "next line". To indent, say, "tab key". You can also have up a box of commands off to the side of your screen and that will give you all the quick codes you are looking for.

This software is really neat and is saving me a lot of time, as I have a pretty full day without having to sit and constantly type for the most part of it. You can even set it up for E-mail and have it do just about anything where you need typing done.

The software is available through select vendors on www.nuance.com or directly from them. There are different versions and some can be purchased with a microphone, if you don't have one.

There is a screenshot of the dictation box that you can use, but I choose to type directly into my Word document. Of course, anyone in the Medical Profession will use this in a totally different way than I am and the great thing is this software recognizes all of the medical terms.

Oh, if you happen to have an iPhone, Dragon is availablel for FREE, as an APP. Just download it to your phone and dictate. But be patient because it will need time to understand what you are saying. Then you can select to send that message as an Email or text message.

Definitely something worth looking into for either the Medical Professional or person like me that needs a little help and time saver.

There is a 99% accuracy rate with this software.

The available languages are: American English, Asian English, Australian English, Indian English, UK English, Dutch, French and German.