What's New in Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9
Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 enables busy professionals to create documents and e-mails, fill out forms, and streamline workflow tasks ”all by speaking! Dragon NaturallySpeaking is about three times faster than typing, and up to 99% accurate. Talk to your computer and your words instantly appear in the full Microsoft® Office® Suite, plus Microsoft Internet Explorer, Corel® WordPerfect®, Lotus® Notes®, and virtually all other Windows®-based applications. And even better, you can create voice commands that execute multi-step computer tasks instantly ”imagine the time you'll save! Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 is section 508 certified, and offers complete hands-free use of the PC for users with disabilities. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 also includes optional tools for network deployments, such as support for Citrix thin clients.
- Unprecedented Speech Recognition Accuracy
- The new Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 speech engine is up to 20% more accurate than version 8.
- No Script Reading Required
- Get started instantly with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 without having to read any scripts or training text.
- Expanded Support for Applications
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 now supports Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.
- Tutorials
- New tutorials simplify the training process, so you can be an expert Dragon NaturallySpeaking user right away.
- Support for Non-standard Edit Controls
- Support for Non-standard Edit Controls means you get full Dragon functionally, such as "Select-And-Say" in more applications than ever before. Newly supported edit controls include Borland's TMemo, TEdit & TRichEdit controls as well as TE Edit from SubSystems and TX Text from TX Text Control.
- Select-And-Say Indicator
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 includes a new indicator that lets you know when you have "Select-And-Say" functionality available.
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking Command Browser
- The Dragon NaturallySpeaking Command Browser is faster and easier to use than ever before. New! Bluetooth Wireless Microphone Support Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 now supports certain Bluetooth wireless microphone as an input device, empowering you to dictate without being tethered to your PC.
- Higher Accuracy
- Although all editions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking use the same core engine, the ability to create multiple custom vocabularies in Professional, Medical and Legal can increase accuracy by as much as 5%.
- User Profile Available Anywhere on the Network
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 makes your user profile available anywhere on the network, via mapped drive, UNC Path or http, and automatically synchronizes updates and adaptations centrally.
- Citrix Support
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 supports Citrix deployments, giving users access from thin client workstations.
- Voice Notations
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 includes a new "Voice Notations" feature for Microsoft Word, which allows users to include untranscribed instructions for third-party editors.
- Tools for Network Management
- Manage user profiles, vocabularies and installations of Dragon NaturallySpeaking over a network with a new GUI.
- Dictate Into More Handheld Devices
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 also supports handheld digital recorders and other PDAs that record in .wma and .mp3 format for deferred transcription.
- DNS Administrator
- Use DNS Administrator to manage vocabularies and commands from a central network location.
Pricing
Of course, NGT, Inc. will continue to provide discounted pricing on NaturallySpeaking products wherever possible. We are providing the new List Price structure below, please check with us for specific pricing information:
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 9
- List price: $199.99, educational price: $179.99
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9
- List price: $899.99, educational and government pricing: to be decided
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical/Legal 9
- List price: $1199.99, educational and government pricing: to be decided
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9
- Upgrade price, after September 15: $299.99
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical/Legal 9
- Upgrade price, after September 15: $449.99
Please feel free to contact us by telephone or e-mail with orders or questions.
As always, thank you for the opportunity to be of service to you and your organizations. We will welcome the chance to move forward into the next generation of speech technology with all of you.
Edward S. Rosenthal, ATACP GraduatePresident and CEO, Next Generation Technologies, Inc.
A Review from the New York Times
Testing, testing, one two three. Is this thing on?
Well, I'll be darned. It's really on and it's really working. I'm wearing a headset, talking, and my PC is writing down everything I say in Microsoft Word. I'm speaking at full speed, perfectly normally except that I'm pronouncing the punctuation (comma), like this (period).
Let's try something a little tougher. Pyridoxine hydrochloride. Antagonistic Lilliputians. Infinitesimal zithers.
Hm! Not bad.
Oh, hi, honey. Did you get to the bank before it closed? Oh, hold on, let me turn off the mike. Wouldn't want our conversation to wind up in my column!
O.K., back again. The software I'm using is Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, the latest version of the best-selling speech-recognition software for Windows. This software, w
For this reason, it doesn't much matter whether or not you skip the initial training; the accuracy of the two approaches will eventually converge toward 100 percent.
NatSpeak 9 is remarkable for a second reason, too: it's a new version containing very little new.
Yes, they've eliminated the training requirement. And yes, the new NatSpeak is 20 percent more accurate than before if you do the initial training. Then again, what's a 20 percent improvement in a program that's already 99.4 percent accurate ” 99.5? That's maybe one less error every 1,000 words.
(Nuance has done some clever engineering to wring these additional drops of accuracy out of the program. For example, the program has always used context to determine a word's identity, taking into account the two or three words on either side of it to distinguish, say, bear from The company says that Version 9 scans an even greater swath of the surrounding words.)
But the rest of the changes are minor. The top-of-the-screen toolbar has shed the squared-off Windows 3.1 look in favor of a more rounded Windows Vista look. You can now use certain Bluetooth wireless headsets for dictation, although Nuance has found only two so far that put the microphone close enough to your mouth to get clear sound. A new toolbar indicator lets you know when you're in a select and say program like Word ” that is, a program where you can highlight, manipulate and format any text you see on the screen using voice commands.
At least Nuance hasn't gone the way of so many software companies, piling on features and complexity in hopes of winning your upgrade dollars. For the second straight revision, the company has preferred to nip and tuck, making careful and selective improvements.
Now, Nuance isn't the only game in speech-recognition town. Microsoft says that Windows Vista, when it makes its debut next year, will come with built-in dictation software.
Nuance claims not to be worried, pointing out that Vista will understand only English. NatSpeak, on the other hand, is available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, British English and World English, which can handle South African, Southeast Asian and Australian accents.
NatSpeak is also available in a range of versions for the American market, including medical and legal incarnations. Mere mortals will probably want to consider either the Standard version ($100) or the Preferred version ($200), each of which comes with a headset. Both offer the same accuracy.
The Preferred edition, however, offers several shiny bells and whistles. One of them is transcription from a digital pocket voice recorder. This approach doesn't provide the same accuracy as a headset, and it requires what today is considered an excruciating amount of training reading: at least 15 minutes. But it does free you from dictating at the computer.
The Preferred perk is voice macros, where you teach it to type one thing when you say another. For example, you can say forget it and have the software spit out, Thank you so much for your inquiry. Unfortunately, after much consideration, we regret that we must decline your application at this time.
There's also a $900 version called Professional, which offers, among other advanced features, complete control over your PC by voice; it can even set in motion elaborate multi-step automated tasks.
NatSpeak also runs beautifully on the Macintosh. The setup is a bit involved: you need a recent Intel-based Mac, Apple's free Boot Camp utility, a copy of Windows XP, and a U.S.B. adapter on your headset. And you have to restart the Mac in Windows each time you want to use NatSpeak. But if you can look past all that fine print, NatSpeak on Macintosh is extremely fast and accurate.
If that sounds like too much effort, there is a Macintosh-only alternative: iListen ($130 with headset). Version 1.7, newly adapted for Intel Macs, offers better accuracy and a shorter training time than previous versions, though nothing like the sophistication or accuracy of NatSpeak. After 30 minutes of training, the program made 42 mistakes in my 1,000-word book excerpt, which the company says is better than average.
As for NaturallySpeaking: if you're already using Version 8, it's probably not worth upgrading to Version 9. Most people will find the changes to be too few and too subtle.
But if you're among the thousands who have abandoned dictation software in the past, it's a different story. Version 9 is a stronger argument than ever that for anyone who can't or doesn't like to type, dictation software is ready for prime time; the state of this art has attained nearly Star Trek polish.
Excuse me ” what, honey?
O.K., I'm just finishing up here; I'll be right down. Let me just turn my mike off.
David Pogue, July 20, 2006, New York TimesPage Last Updated: Sunday, June 01, 2008
Copyright 1999- 2008 Next Generation Technologies Incorporated
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