Speech recognition software can be a godsend for anyone who needs to type a lot, doctors, lawyers, students, sufferers of RSI or those with other injuries can all benefit from Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.5.

Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking is the most well-known and most popular speech-to-text program and it has a long history. It's fair to say that only in recent years have computer become powerful enough and USB microphones accurate enough, to enable it to deliver on its potential. This has certainly been the experience of many users who have used earlier versions of Naturally Speaking.
Nuance claims Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Premium has a 15 per cent improvement in accuracy over the previous version. Having used Dragon 11.5 for a few weeks now, I can tell you - I believe this. There are other improvements, too. Naturally Speaking 11 Premium is more accurate from the very start, requiring less training and delivering greater productivity in those all-important early stages of use. I installed it on a laptop with Windows 7 to test this, and I have to say I am very impressed.

The software needs some basic information before you start working with it. It needs to know what region of the world you live in and any accent you might speak with, as well as your age bracket. So make sure you buy Dragon in Australia from a certified retailer like voicerecognition.com.au to ensure you get an Australian accented version and not some dodgy UK or US accent software. This basic data gives it a few pointers to help it understand your voice. As part of the short induction process, you have to read out a few sample sentences to further train the software to your voice.

 You also need to calibrate your headset during setup. Naturally Speaking 11 Premium is available bundled with a wired analogue standard headset. It’s a pretty low end but ok to get started if your inbuilt soundcard is good quality. To be honest, I chucked mine out as I was supplied the Andrea NC181VMUSB digital noise cancelling USB headset. The NC181VMUSB was a little extra money, but the performance is leagues ahead of the standard headset.  The NC181VM USB is the headset we used to test the software with so please bear in mind your results will vary if you use the included headset or el-cheapo usb headsets like the Logitech ones. They just won’t do.

 The setup process takes under a quarter of an hour. With that completed, you can let the software scan your My Documents folder so it can analyse your writing style and also pick up commonly typed bits of information such as the email addresses you use, to help it improve the accuracy of its speech recognition. How long that takes will vary depending on how many documents you load in. You can manually redirect the program to other folders (even network folders) to add additional documents. If, like us, you have a lot of content in that folder produced by other people, it might be worth skipping that part of the process as we did. There’s no point teaching Dragon words you don't use.

 Accuracy was surprisingly good, and we really like the way you can make corrections. Simply saying ‘correct’ and what has been incorrectly transcribed, or saying ‘correct that’ calls up a menu from which you can choose the words to be corrected, spelling out the correct words, convert lower case text into capital letters, or simply type over the incorrectly transcribed text to teach the program what it should have done.

 There are plenty of other voice commands you can use too. These go beyond mere dictation and aren't available in the cheaper Home edition of the software. They show how Naturally Speaking 11 Premium interacts with a range of applications. Saying ‘Search the web for IT Pro’ will open your browser and complete that task. Saying ‘Search email for Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Premium review’ will do precisely what you'd expect.

 You can control applications and windows with commands like ‘start Firefox’, ‘minimise window’, ‘switch to next window’, and ‘show desktop’. You can manage the mouse too, either by saying commands such as ‘move mouse up’, ‘move mouse left’, ‘mouse click’, ‘drag mouse down fast’, and ‘mouse double click’ or by using a grid system which turns the whole screen or a window into a 3 x 3 grid and homes in on numbered squares till the mouse is precisely where you want it to be. It sounds a little clunky, but is surprisingly effective.

Voice commands are outlined on the supplied quick reference card. This card is very handy for newcomers to the software as it explains the main commands you are likely to use. There are many more commands and these can be learnt by referring to the on-screen side bar.

Dragon Professional edition is a version designed for professional users like doctors, lawyers and people who dictate a lot and can be deployed across a network with pricing dependent on the number of required licenses. Site licence and multi-user pricing is available by contacting voicerecognition.com.au.

Overall, we were impressed with Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Premium. It is definitely the best version of the software we have seen yet due to its good out-of-the-box accuracy and its straightforward configuration.

 The bottom line is it takes me - the two fingered typist - about 8 minutes to dictate a page of text (over 600 words) with Dragon. So that’s roughly 75 words per minute.

It used to take me about 25 minutes or so to type 600 words - and I would have to come back and fix typos. So that’s about 24 words per minute.

 So, Dragons about 3X times faster than typing for me. You will get bigger or small gains depending on your typing skill. And of course, this gain in productivity doesn't allow for the fact that you won't be making any typo's that you have to correct later (Dragon can't make spelling mistakes).

And you will save your hands and wrists from typing - a well know source of injury for the long term typist.

Oh yes. One thing I forgot to add. Using Dragon is FUN. It’s like having your own super personal assistant to dictate to!
Try it and you won't be disappointed.

So what are you waiting for? Call us on 1300 255 900 or order Dragon 11 online today!