Speak Easy

Dictation Packages: Software That Listens

Farewell, long enrollment processes: Dragon's NaturallySpeaking Preferred 3.5, L&H's Voice Xpress Professional 4, and Philips's FreeSpeech 2000 all require shorter enrollment periods than their predecessors. And the programs remain as accurate as if you'd done 50 minutes of training the old way. Unfortunately, accuracy itself hasn't noticeably improved. At best, these programs still misinterpret approximately 1 word out of 20.

The minimum system requirement for Dragon is a Pentium-133; for L&H it's a PII; and for Philips it's a P166 with MMX. All companies recommend that you use at least a PII. Of course the older your PC, the more sluggishly the software will perform. But snazzy hardware isn't the only thing good speech recognition requires. Like a new puppy, dictation software behaves better if you give it ongoing training.

All three products will read your orations back to you, using their bundled text-to-speech engines. This feature can be useful for proofreading your own dictation, like your outgoing e-mail messages. Be prepared, though: All three packages' canned voices make HAL from 2001 sound like a warm and caring mainframe. (Vendors say more-natural voices are not far off.) Dragon and Philips will also let you hear your own voice played back, if you need to check what you actually said.

After all was said and done, Dragon's NaturallySpeaking stood as the clear choice. The other two packages can do some things that Dragon can't, but NaturallySpeaking's superlative word recognition and overall ease of use far outweigh any shortcomings.