Does Dragon Dictate or a digital voice recorder/transcription software work well with the writing process?
December 29, 2010 12:43 PM Subscribe
Any luck with Dragon Dictate for the Mac, Dragon for the Ipad, and/or software that can digitally transcribe from a digital voice recorder (olympus DS-5000?
I'm looking for ways to streamline my writing process. I've really been interested in the Dragon products for my macbook and ipad for the past few months. However I always seem to find enough negative reviews about the software not working that deters me from actually buying it. I think Dragon Dictate for the Mac is about $200. For the ipad it's free just scaled way back.
I also just read about using a digital voice recorder and then uploading that to your computer, and then having transcription software automatically transcribe the file. This was using an Olympia DS-5000, however reviews on Amazon describe that automatic transcription doesn't actually work.
I'm inexperienced with any of this software and would like to know if any of you out there have found it worth the price to use any of these?
Also, can I use Pages for the Ipad with Dragon? I think basically you just speak and it records your voice as text and then you paste the text wherever you want so I don't see why not but figured I would ask.
I'm looking for ways to streamline my writing process. I've really been interested in the Dragon products for my macbook and ipad for the past few months. However I always seem to find enough negative reviews about the software not working that deters me from actually buying it. I think Dragon Dictate for the Mac is about $200. For the ipad it's free just scaled way back.
I also just read about using a digital voice recorder and then uploading that to your computer, and then having transcription software automatically transcribe the file. This was using an Olympia DS-5000, however reviews on Amazon describe that automatic transcription doesn't actually work.
I'm inexperienced with any of this software and would like to know if any of you out there have found it worth the price to use any of these?
Also, can I use Pages for the Ipad with Dragon? I think basically you just speak and it records your voice as text and then you paste the text wherever you want so I don't see why not but figured I would ask.
For anyone with experience who answers this question: does this software come in a multi-user version suitable for an office?
posted by Madamina at 2:18 PM on December 29, 2010
posted by Madamina at 2:18 PM on December 29, 2010
If you have Windows 7, you have speech recognition built right in. It works pretty well for dictation. Unfortunately in OSX, there is only built in speech recognition for commands to start programs. Dragon works pretty well and the newest version works the best so far. You can feed audio files into Dragon, so you can combine a digital voice recorder with Dragon.
There should be no problem dictating in Dragon for the iPad and pasting into Pages.
Be aware that using any dictation software will require you to learn how to use it most effectively.
Madamina, can you clarify your question please? Dragon supports multiple profiles on any one computer. But I don't know how you could share the profiles among a number of computers. Perhaps moving them to a shared network drive or something.
posted by reddot at 2:30 PM on December 29, 2010
There should be no problem dictating in Dragon for the iPad and pasting into Pages.
Be aware that using any dictation software will require you to learn how to use it most effectively.
Madamina, can you clarify your question please? Dragon supports multiple profiles on any one computer. But I don't know how you could share the profiles among a number of computers. Perhaps moving them to a shared network drive or something.
posted by reddot at 2:30 PM on December 29, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by fairmettle at 1:06 PM on December 29, 2010