Dragon Naturally Speaking 7.0 may not be a new choice in the speech recognition market, but it’s one of the best in the biz. This new version took the field by scoring a 97% to 98% accuracy rate when taking dictation. Dragon Naturally Speaking is easy to install and configure. You can be up and running within about 15 minutes, a span that includes a quick training session. Microphone setup is a snap. A wizard walks you through configuring the mike’s volume and tests the quality of the overall audio (an Emkay microphone headset is included in the box).
Dragon Naturally Speaking 7.0 offers improved accuracy and several new productivity tools designed to ease the chores of dictation and control. One such tool is an autopunctuation feature that automatically inserts commas and periods. Unfortunately, it’s a little unreliable. Once Naturally Speaking is active, you can dictate text into most Windows-based applications. The accuracy of this program is amazing. We dictated more than 100 words for a business letter, and the program churned out the document with only three typos. In addition to dictating text, you can control menus and dialog boxes with your voice.