Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 review
This time round, the big betterment comes in the quality department. Instead of adding a kajillion new features (cough every interpretation of Microsoft Word pre-2007) or radically revamping its interface (cough Microsoft Word 2007), Nuance tells that lots of its development effort went into promoting Naturally Speaking’s core acknowledgement engine.
The software now makes 20 percent fewer identification errors”though, since version 9 was already surprisingly exact, a 20 percent boost won’t be nearly as severe to users as it would have been 5 years ago, when speech identification was just getting into its own.
But the recognition engine wasn’t just tuned to make fewer slips; it was also tuned up to respond more quickly to user input. While version 9 offers high levels of accuracy, there would oftentimes be a two- or three-second wait while the program deciphered your last phrase and spat it onto the screen.
In version 10, Nuance claims to achieve a 50 percent decrease in this kind of latent period. Because reaction time in version 9 was quite an variable, depending on decided software settings, the load on the machine’s CPU, and what was being said at any specific moment, it’s a tough claim to verify. In my own friendly examination, still, it’s clear that version 10 turns words into text with considerably less delay than its precursor.
When a platform costs as much as Naturally Speaking 10, many users will object to the lack of big other features”and there’s a case to be made that Nuance’s own innovation engine is sputtering a bit when it comes to NaturallySpeaking (that case is given at the close of the review). But, after 10 versions, this is a feature-rich software package already.
As a steady user of NaturallySpeaking, I’m more than pleased to see an emphasis on center functionality at the write down of new features. Besides, many of the program’s characteristics relate to correcting errors. If NaturallySpeaking has fewer slips to lead off with, and is more responsive while leading, such features are needed less often and thus seem a bit less important.
The recognition engine in edition 10 is zero short of stunning. You can literally set up the software, run through a five-minute developing process, and start dictating with near-total accuracy. If you’ve never finished it before, the action will likely leave you staring in goggle-eyed question at your screen, sputtering sentence after sentence into your headset in an attempt to experience what the platform can’t do.
I’ve been working with NaturallySpeaking for years, so the honeymoon glow faded long ago, to be substituted (as in every marriage) with good affection and the occasional murderous impulse. Why the apoplectic outbursts? Version 9 didn’t hold Vista, for 1 thing, so upgrading to the new OS meant leaving Naturally Speaking behind for several calendar months until Nuance put out a leading patch. The software package just worked with certain variations of Firefox, so after upgrading my web browser, I was forced to use Internet Explorer if I wanted to do some hands-free browsing. At Last, version 9 brought out my Hulk-rage by catching my voice profile, not once but several times”and across dual machines. Finally, after compiling hundreds of megabytes of data under a special Nuance program that would “tune” your profile in exchange for all that wonderful speech data, Nuance never actually bothered to send me the tuned profile. Impressive.
It’s too early to say if version 10 will fare much better on that last count, but in some ways, it hardly matters. Even in version 9, I quickly realized that the best approach was simply to create a new profile; the software was so accurate that “starting from scratch” wasn’t a big deal. With the improved recognition engine in the new version, it appears to be even less of a worry.
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