New, NaturallySpeaking Version 10
Click for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 10 order form: Pricing & Order form
Just released Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 10, is an amazing upgrade over previous versions. The increased accuracy, speed, plus many new features, means you will achieve huge productivity gains.
Greater Accuracy
NaturallySpeaking Version 10, will provide you with a staggering 20% greater accuracy than NaturallySpeaking Version 9.
NaturallySpeaking 9 has been praised by users and the press, and won numerous awards, for the productivity and outstanding accuracy it produced. Now NaturallySpeaking 10 breaks through that bar, to provide a dramatic increase in the accuracy of transcribing the words you dictate.
Greater Speed
The Engineers at Nuance, tuned every line of code within the NaturallySpeaking engine, to accelerate how quickly your words display as you say them. This also jumps the quickness that Dragon will perform the commands you say.
Seeing your words transcribed faster, will mean you can edit and correct as you dictate, all making you more productive than ever before.
NaturallySpeaking 10 now handles Accents
NaturallySpeaking 10 includes special profiles, that are programmed to accept many different accents. When starting NaturallySpeaking 10, you can select from different pre-set accent profiles. You can now pick a Southern US Accent, there is a Great Lakes region accent, or a General US accent. If you are originally from overseas, you can select the Southeast Asian, Spanish, Indian region, Australian, or British accents. Choosing from these extended accents will provide much better accuracy, much quicker.
NaturallySpeaking 10 Adapts to users with speech problems
Dragon has a “Teen” accent, to handle voices before they reach maturity, plus there is one more new training method. NaturallySpeaking now has added a self paced reading profile. This is especially important both for people with speech difficulties, and also learning disorders. With this new enroll procedure, the user can read a script completely at their own pace. When the NaturallySpeaking profile has heard enough audio information, it tells you, and then performs its adaptation. This takes the pressure off the user to fit within the regular training method. Also, it helps to gather a more natural sample of speech from the user, which helps in gaining them more accuracy.
PC Requirements remain the same, for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10
In all past upgrades, the new Dragon version always required increased specifications for a faster computer with more memory. NaturallySpeaking 10, requires the exact same minimums and the same recommended specifications as NaturallySpeaking 9. At Minimum you still need 1 GHz of speed, and 512 MB RAM memory. It also requires the same 1 GB Hard Drive space.
The recommended specifications for Dragon are the same by recommending 2.4 GHz processor speed, (1.6 GHz processor speed for dual core PC’s), and 1 GB RAM memory size. NaturallySpeaking 10 also requires the same amount of hard disk space to run the program, (1 GB free hard drive space).
For the first time, Dragon is listing the needed L2 Cache size for NaturallySpeaking. They have set the L2 Cache side needed at 512 kb. Dragon recommends a size of 1 MB L2 Cache. In talks with Nuance, the L2 size did not sound important, but more as a suggestion to add on your shopping specifications whenever you buy new PC’s in the future.
If you have any questions about your PC’s amount of memory, speed, or L2 Cache, I would suggest downloading the Free software package CPUZ, version 1.46 at www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php This free program test your computers operation, gives you a full reading of all these specification of your computer.
There have been a few changes. Dragon no longer supports Windows XP with the SP1 (service pack one). Most computers are running either XP SP2 or now SP3. If you need to upgrade, go to our Download section on our Video Page, to upgrade your computer to XP3. Free Download XP Service Pack3 and those service packs are all free upgrades, so that is not a problem. It requires the same amount of hard drive space.
One disappointment is they were talking about having this new version available for use with 64 bit operating systems, as well as 32. That is especially important for Vista Ultimate version users. I have been through many headaches downgrading Ultimate users to 32 bit. Nuance was still hinting at 64 bit usage coming, but requiring 32 bit is no change from the current requirement. They are asking for Internet Explorer 6 instead of version 5. One other change is they are now putting out the software on DVD disks, instead of CD's. That could require an external DVD drive to be used during install, or copying the software over to a USB drive to do the installation.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, Now Works Even Easier, to Transcribe Text from Digital Recorders
With Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9,there is an option to create a desktop folder, in which you can copy digital dictations from a hand-held recording device. When you place your new recordings into that folder, NaturallySpeaking automatically transcribes them. This makes the work flow for recorded transcription much easier and quicker, with many less steps.
More Bluetooth Input Devices Are Now Supported by NaturallySpeaking 10
We have been offering a wireless solution to be able to dictate into NaturallySpeaking, and also use the same wireless headset to talk on the phone. With NaturallySpeaking 10 and new microphones we have tested, you will now be able to add Bluetooth headsets, as an input device. This provides you with more flexibility, for dictating into your computer, without wires. There is an expanding list of Bluetooth headsets that work with NaturallySpeaking. Plus, the engineers are actively testing other Bluetooth devices, to insure their compatibility, and will soon be adding those models to the approved device list.
Our Own Impressions, (Mark's comments)
As with all other users, we are always looking forward to new releases, for their increased accuracy.
To test this new version, I installed it on a computer that never was any good for speech recognition. The PC is one of those no-name, small store build it yourself type jobs with a terrible sound card. Then, to make it a little more interesting, I attached an outdated wireless microphone, that also never was able to give us very good recognition. I figured, if you're going to test something, why not put it under the worse possible conditions! If I throw the worst possible conditions at it and if I get halfway decent results, maybe this new Version 10 is a little more accurate
To my delight, this new Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 10 software, right out of the box with a brand-new voice profile, set up to fail, is transcribing my words as if I'd been working with it for years, and running it on my best computer with a top-of-the-line microphone. I am especially impressed with Dragon 10's new vocabulary. I am throwing it words that I knew were not in version 9's dictionary and tossing in foreign names just to try to make it fail, and it knows and perfectly transcribed everything I could think of.
The engineers have done such a magnificent job with this new version, that NaturallySpeaking appears to be reading my mind as I dictate.
Also, this new version, for the first time automatically adjusts the program according to the power of the computer. There is a slider bar, which with all previous versions you had to set manually, that if you slide it to the left, NaturallySpeaking will transcribe your words onto your screen faster. If you side that bar to the right, your transcription will be more accurate, but your words will take longer to appear transcribed on your screen. You always want this bar set as far toward accuracy as possible.
With this new version, the people at Dragon bragged that with this version, the words you dictate will appear on the screen twice as fast as the previous version. When I created a new profile on this "horrible" PC, the Dragon program reported it was setting that slider all the way toward speed.
I instantly thought, "What a cute trick! All they did was just adjusted that slider bar all the way to the left, so that my transcription will appear faster". They said that I could still override that setting, so I immediately went in and slid the bar more than halfway toward "accuracy", to test just how quickly my words would show up on the screen.
Once again, I am delighted with the results. Even overriding their settings, pushing it way beyond what the setting really should be, I am getting my words transcribed into my documents much faster than Version 9 Dragon. There is no comparison between the versions. This NaturallySpeaking Version 10, even going against their suggested settings, is flashing my words onto the screen it appears in half the time as the previous version! Plus when I give a verbal command, they are being acting upon twice as fast as the previous versions.
As users of speech recognition myself, and as a trainer of speech recognition to students for the last 15 years, I wanted improvement from this new version, but I tried everything I could think of, to make it fail. Of course, in the background I was cheering it on. I not only have to cheer, I have to jump up and give this Version 10 a standing ovation. NaturallySpeaking 10, is truly a giant step forward for users who want to use this wonderful speech recognition program to increase their productivity and overall throughput of work.
Click here to see more details about NaturallySpeaking 10
Click for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 10 order form: Pricing & Order form
