Home Forums Dictating on a Mac with Siri.

Recently I've been looking at my dictation options: from Dragon Naturally Speaking medical to Windows speech recognition to Siri on the Mac. I have one computer in my office that is running Mac OS X with Windows 7 64-bit running in parallels. I was having some difficulty with Windows speech recognition, as it would not actually type in amazing charts boxes, although it seemed to work well with Word. Thin I discovered I can start Siri speech recognition on the Mac and it would work fine under Windows. It also types find into amazing charts text boxes! The previous was dictated.

Does anyone know the trick to getting Windows speech recognition to work with amazing charts boxes?

Chris,

There are a couple of things that you might want to consider:

1. Microsoft has all but given up on WSR (Windows speech recognition) because Nuance holds 99% of the effective patents and there is no profit since Microsoft freely includes this technology with Windows 7/8. While WSR is an amazing product for the price (being free), when compared to NaturallySpeaking, it?s equivalent comparing Notepad to Microsoft Word.

2. Even though you can dictate into an Amazing Charts field using Siri, comparing Siri to WSR is equivalent to comparing Notepad to Microsoft Word and if you?re comparing it to NaturallySpeaking, it?s a joke. On the upside, Siri is free, surprisingly accurate and requires no training. On the downside, you are limited to 20 seconds, you can?t make any changes to your vocabulary, correction or perform any of hundreds of other specialized options that you would have available to you in a proper speech recognition application such as DMPE 2 (Dragon Medical w/New Ver. 12 Speech Engine) ~ http://www.knowbrainer.com/NewStore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=466&idcategory=71 . Siri is basically a non-gender specific stripped-down NaturallySpeaking speech utility with very little overhead so that it can run on a smart phone. It is not a speech recognition application. Its primary design is for performing short dictations, web searches and responding to short email messages. In other words it will not hold up well in a real work environment and shouldn?t be considered a viable speech recognition option. That was never its intended design.

Chris,

How do I turn on Siri on an iMac? Can't seem to find it.

In Mountain Lion- system preferences- speech and dictation. Under tips it says you are limited to 30 sec. I just played with it- I can say a lot in 30 sec. Obviously not Dragon but isn't bad for a secondary alternative.

I'm testing hosted AC- it does not work within the hosted AC.

Yes, just turn it on under system preferences. I was surprised how accurate it is. I only need to speak one paragraph before stopping and checking for errors. I think Tom is denigrating with his analogies more than necessary, as the real function is to understand what you are saying, which Dragon seems to do poorly at, especially for 1600 dollars

I agree with both of you. Dragon is analogous to Word, which is vastly more complex than anyone needs to dictate a simple letter. I think it is like using a 600 horsepower steam engine to power a lawnmower. If a stripped down speech recognition program were available it would be vastly preferable regardless of cost. I have used Dragon for years, find it mostly works, and is complex, not very stable, and overkill.