Dragon Naturally Speaking

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prw1960

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Has anyone tried running Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred (9) under Windows on a Intel chipped iMAC or Macbook ?? I am ready to ditch PC and get a Mac but need to know if this works ??? Ta.
 
It works fine, I do this form time to time. You will have to use a USB headset, I have a Plantronics DSP 400 that works well. The only thing that can cause some problems is that parallels can get fussy about when the USB is connected. The simple rule that seems to work for me is plug in the headset before starting/waking parallels and suspend parallels before disconnecting the headset.

And yes I wish some one had been able to tell me this before I tried to get things running, it was an experiment when I did it.

Good Luck!
 
Thanks alot Lurk, i am buying tomorrow and cant wait. Have no idea what parallels are but finally i have an answer to the main q...Cheers
 
No problem. As for Parallels, there are two ways that you can run windows on your Mac. The first is BootCamp which gives you the ability to boot into windows, this one is free. The second is a commercial product called Parallels that lets you run windows inside a window on your Mac desktop. I really prefer this as I can use the 2 Windows programs I need while spending 98% of my time in Mac-land.
 
Hi,

I also have a question on this topic. I have a Macbook and want to use the Dragon Naturally Speaking preffered 9. The provider of Dragon tells me I need to buy ClaroRead Standard for Mac '08 to make Dragon compatible for the Macbook. He said I don't need to buy the ClaroRead if my macbook has Parallels, Intell processor and Windows XP. Maybe a stupid question; but how can ik check if my macbook has this?
Thanks!
 
Actually, at this point I would not get Dragon for windows anymore. The folks over at MacSpeech have ported it over to OS X as MacSpeech Dictate, it is the same recognition engine as dragon but you can actually use it outside of windows.

Now, ClaroRead is a totally different thing, it is for text-to-speech. I have never used it and I am not sure how it compares to the text-to-speech tools that already are present on the Mac.
 
oke, but I hear very good stories about Dragon and I dont know if MacSpeech is also available in Dutch (the language I'm working in)...
 
I am not sure about the dutch part in the short term. MacSpeech used to have a program called iListen that was a dog, but around Christmas they announced Dictate which is just a port of Dragon. So the good things you hear should now be the same on both platforms.
 
thanks lurk. As far as I can see from here on the Internet, MacSpeech is not yet available in Dutch. So we have to wait here then...
 
lurk said:
It works fine, I do this form time to time. You will have to use a USB headset, I have a Plantronics DSP 400 that works well. The only thing that can cause some problems is that parallels can get fussy about when the USB is connected. The simple rule that seems to work for me is plug in the headset before starting/waking parallels and suspend parallels before disconnecting the headset.

And yes I wish some one had been able to tell me this before I tried to get things running, it was an experiment when I did it.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...
Hi Lurk

Reading with interest this post and appreciate your insights here. I am close to buying Dragon Naturally Speaking (as opposed to MacSpeech - their recent blog traffic has been deteriorating alarmingly) for a new Macbook Pro with Parallels for a quadriplegic patient and wanted to weigh in on this discussion.

I understand this is not an ideal solution (using a virtual PC emulation) but the stability and user friendliness of Macs makes me feel that this could be more appropriate than the PC route which requires more system expertise.

Seeing that you have expressed satisfaction in this configuration, would you be open to posting your specifications of this installation and any extra thoughts/problems on this?

Many thanks, DaveMacG
 
I received Sony ICD-SX68DR9 handheld voice recorder with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 as a bundled package for the holidays.

I am eager to jump in, but worried it won't work.
Does anyone know if it will or how I can make it work easily?

If not, is there a handheld recorder available that will work?

I'd like to record things while at work, plug into computer, have it transcribed on my MacBook. Any suggestions please, I got as a gift and am trying to make this Sony work somehow.

Thanks.
 
Hi - I have the same question. I have Dragon 9 for PC but never used it as it is a little slow for me but have to start using it due to a disability. And I'm about to buy a whole new MAC system. So, same question: Has anybody tried it? Can it be done? Or do I have to purchase a MAC version of something similar? I'd like Dragon as the university will train me on it.
 
There is an entire discussion list devoted to voice recognition/transcription on the Macintosh:

MacVoice
http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/macvoice

(I have an interest in this topic because I'm the head of a huge user group for Mac-using attorneys, and many attorneys prefer to dictate rather than type their work. So I answer questions about this all the time.)

Several users on the MacVoice discussion list report that they are using Dragon Dictate running under Windows in virtualization on their Macs with no problem.

MacSpeech came out with MacSpeech Dictate (using the Dragon recognition engine) about a year and a half ago.
http://www.macspeech.com
http://atmac.org/macspeech-dictate-is-highly-recommended/
The performance was great, but it wasn't feature-complete because it was rushed to market. This caused quite a bit of hard feelings among some users. I don't know if MacSpeech Dictate has feature-parity with Dragon yet, but I do know that they released an update to the product just this past week, and it is now reportedly a very useable product.
http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=321

If you decide that you want to run Dragon/Win on your Macintosh, you will need a virtualization program (Bootcamp, Parallels or Fusion), a copy of Windows, and an Intel-based Macintosh.

The good news is that there is a dynamite deal going on right now for Parallels that includes a bunch of other nice software as a package deal:

Parallels, by itself, is usually $80. Here it is bundled with a bunch of other software for only $50:
http://www.mupromo.com/deal/852/5801/bundle

Finally, I should point out that no matter which dictation/transcription solution you go for, there is always a fair amount of both luck and work involved in getting the product to work acceptably for you.

It takes 'luck' in that you will only get good results if your voice and style of speech matches the model in the program well. If they don't, then you will probably never get that particular program to work well for you.

It takes 'work' in that the program will only attain a very high level of recognition accuracy if you constantly train and re-train it by correcting errors as they occur. (Note that even if the program achieves a 97% accuracy, that there will still be three errors for every 100 words that you dictate. Even worse, those three errors will be hard to pick up, because the program uses a dictionary for its guesses, so its not like they will be misspellings that can be caught with a spell-checker. You will have to carefully proof what you have written to catch them.)

I hope this helps.
 
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