Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred

PRO: Best overall accuracy, easy to use

CON: Dictating numbers is awkward, middling on-screen navigation

The only program to come close to its flashy marketing claims, the $160 Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred handled text entry well, and it let me switch easily between dictating, correcting, and formatting text.

Dragon's software did by far the best job of recognizing the text of the test business letter, with surprisingly precise matches for tricky proper names such as "O'Keeffe," "Bernardo," and "Peterborough." Overall, the Dragon package very nearly succeeded in achieving its claimed 95 percent accuracy rate.

When Dragon does make a mistake, you can go into editing mode by simply saying "delete that" or "scratch that," and then repeating the correct word or phrase. Formatting text is a breeze, too: You simply select text and say phrases like "set font Arial 24," "center that," or "bold that." But like the other three packages, Dragon has a complicated set of navigation and correction commands. Turning to the keyboard and mouse to edit my work was far faster and easier.

Dragon gives you two ways to work with it: You can dictate into the program's text window and paste your document into another app; or you can use Dragon's bundled utilities to dictate directly into your word processor, e-mail program, spreadsheet, or other application. Which is easier? It depends on your personal tastes and on the application you're using. I never had trouble cutting and pasting dictated text into the body of an e-mail, for instance. But with spreadsheets, I found it more efficient to dictate numbers directly into cells.

The NaturalWord add-on, which lets you dictate directly into Microsoft Word 97 (but not any earlier version of Word), functions very much like the main Dragon voice screen. NaturalWord also gives you decent control over menu commands in Word, but I had to try several times before it obeyed my commands, and even then it was faster to jump back to the mouse and keyboard. If your PC has a slower CPU, Dragon warns, the speech recognition process may pause while Naturally Speaking and Word process your dictation, but my Pentium II-333 never had that problem.

The NaturalText feature lets you dictate into almost any Windows 95/98 application. When you install the utility, text and microphone icons appear in Windows' system tray. To use NaturalText, just click the microphone icon and talk.

I tested NaturalText in Internet Explorer Mail 3.02 and in Excel 97 and found it particularly useful for creating the quick, informal messages typical of e-mail. Creating an Excel spreadsheet was more difficult, largely due to the way Dragon handles numbers. To get Dragon to produce 723,000, for instance, I had to say "seven-two-three-comma-zero-zero-zero." Not exactly natural.

If you want to use Dragon to navigate your desktop, the program divides your screen into numbered sectors; when you specify the number of the grid where you need the cursor to appear, the program brings up progressively smaller grids so you can fine-tune the cursor position.

In contrast, NaturallySpeaking makes menu control easy. The keyword click (as in "click Start" or "click File") is the verbal equivalent of a mouse click. It works, too.

Although Dragon falls a bit short of some competitors at navigation, correction, and formatting, it's the best at what matters most--getting the words right the first time you say them. By the time you read this, a new version of NaturallySpeaking should be available; Dragon says it will improve desktop navigation as well as number dictation.