Tech Columnist David Pogue is a prolific author and writer, and he swears by Dragon voice recognition software (made by Nuance). Why type text, when you can speak it 300% faster?
The Windows version of the Dragon software, he says, is “freakishly fast and accurate. It’s so good that in the latest versions, 11 and 12, you don’t even have to train it.”
The latest Mac version is 4.0, and it’s pretty amazing as well according to Pogue. California attorney David Sparks, who runs the MacSparky blog, agrees.
Sparks writes that the “big take away from Dragon Dictate version 4 is that it is both faster and more accurate than its prior version.”
Sparks points out one killer feature: “the command mode where you can drive your Mac with your voice. You can open windows, activate applications, and … control Gmail in your web browser.”
“Jaw-dropping” is what I thought when I tried it on my Mac. But the basic text input feature is pretty impressive too.
I upgraded to Dragon 4.0 and ran a test to see how fast I could dictate. I easily hit 150 words per minute, which is about 6 times faster than I can accurately type.
Bottom line: I heartily recommend voice recognition software to busy attorneys who have fairly new computers (e.g. no more than 3 years old).
To run Dragon Dictate you’ll need an Intel Mac with at least version 10.8 of OS X (“Mountain Lion”), and at least 4 GB of RAM (but 8 GB is recommended). The price of the Mac version of Dragon software is $199 (as of this post).
If you don’t have a Mac then you can buy the latest Windows version of Dragon software for half that price.