I purchased Dragon Dictate home version (naturally speaking) a few months ago. Today I decided to see if I could set it up and use it. Partly because of the program and partly because of other factors, this has been one very frustrating afternoon. Needless to say, I am not trying to use the program to type this.
First off, the CD player did not work on the first old clunker computer I tried it on. So off to the basement to try one of the other dinosaur computers. The "on" button did nothing. Hmmm. How did I plug that computer in anyway? Follow that cord to there and then another cord from there to the outlet. Appeared to all be OK. Check fuses and breakers. No problem there. Outlet is a ground fault outlet. I finally get smart (or at least less oblivious and ignorant) and press the reset button. Desk light goes on. Power to the computer if not to the people.
I insert the Dragon Dictate DVD into the drive. Whirrrrrrr. It is working. First screen that comes up is "Dragon Dictate is not compatible with this OS". Computer OS is Windows XP. Then I finally find the "W7 and W8" logos on the software box. So, off to the new Windows 8 computer.
Looked like everything was going to work. Had microphone and headset plugged in to correct color portal, etc. I think the install took nearly an hour. Then to calibrate the microphone. That did not seem to work. Instructions said to repeat until I heard a beep in the headset. Nothing, Nothing again...several times more. Check the "Help" option. One suggestion was plug microphone and headset into the REAR of the computer. Why it did not work on the front plugins I don't know. Soon as it was in the rear plugins, the microphone test started and completed perfectly almost immediately. Then more setup and then "check for updates". Update was found. That took 3 minutes to downloard, and another 10 minutes to install.
Then the training fun started. It could have been worse, but it could have been better. This is a program with a steep learning curve compared to most I have messed with. Menus, error messages, etc. for training are OK, but sure could be better. I did get it to insert text into Jarte before I completely ran out of patience. I suspect this can be useful, but I really don't know if I have the patience to get proficient with it. Maybe a few minutes every day.
So, about 3 and a half hours later, I am typing this the old fashioned way and being glad I took High School typing from a very patient Mr. Robert T. Lang...now deceased. And very, very glad I can still type and see what goes on the screen. My sympathy to those who have no choice but to use options like speech recognition, etc. I may have learned barely enough to help them with it however.
***Stay tuned for more on the software front...sometime--- Doug Wiken
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