Use Dragon to Web Surf. A Review.

[Geek-9pm]

Hello. 
This is a review about using a voice recognition product to control a web browser. Now if you have and use Windows 10 on a regular basis, this might not be of much interest to you. However, many users are not able to fully utilize the features of Windows 10 for a number of reasons. One being that Windows 10 is incredibly hard to use for people that have a hard time learning how to use things.

This review is about using a speech recognition product that has been on the market for a long time and can be used with almost any operating system or browser. The product I'm using is Dragon naturally speaking. There are several versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you can find versions 10, 11, 12 and 13 available from different vendors. Any of these work very well and there is little reason to claim the latest version is always best.

Prices vary, but yo can find  some early versions under $99 for reputable vendors. Consider investing in a decent headphone with microphone.But it does not ha veto be costly.

Now I want you to know that most of this post was done with dictation from Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It was version 10 and it was upgraded to version 11 for free. I think I bought it for under $100 somewhere online. Before that I had been using an earlier version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking which was bundled with an old version of WordPerfect for Windows. That gives you an idea of how old this product is. It is a very mature product and is well supported by the company. Of course, it's not free. And you have to spend a little bit a time learning how to use it. It does have a learning curve. Fortunately, the company is not going to change everything once in a while just to annoy you. They do not have the Microsoft mentality. They really want people to use their product to be productive and not have to be constantly relearning what they already know. If you know how to talk, you will be able use this product.

If need be, there are some add-ons you can stick into your browser that will make it easier to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But you don't really have to do that.
This is a review about my personal experiences of using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for several years. The reason I bring this up now is that people are getting all excited about how wonderful Windows 10 is with its speech recognition program built-in. Big deal. It's of little help if you can figure out how to use Windows 10. And even so, the speech engine in Windows 10 Will Dr. you crazy with its improper and inappropriate responses. I really don't like it to be told that I should ask for information about the Grand Canyon. I don't want information about the Grand Canyon.
But Dragon naturally speaking never nags me about my lack of knowledge of the Grand Canyon or anything else for that matter. All it does is remind me that I need to have the microphone well-positioned and that I need to work on some of the maintenance features once in a while. The program requires some time to itself to update the vocabulary and profile of the specific user. Yes, Dragon naturally speaking is user specific. I don't find that a problem because I'm the only one that uses it.
Now about web surfing. You can always use inside of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. You can ask you to click on a link and it will click on a link if there's one available.
To help even idea about what you can do with this product and you wrap browser, here is a video that has been prepared by them to help people understand that you don't have to use the Windows 10 product if you are willing to invest a little bit of money and time into a product that is been proven to be effective over the years.
Here is the link:

Use Dragon to control your Web Browser.
My own personal experience with this product has been mostly favorable. The bad part is about their very strict rules about the use of the license key and having it installed on only one computer at a time. It is a real hassle to move the program over to a new computer. So you may want to think very carefully about porting the program over to another computer. It can be done, but you have to consult with the support people and find out what it is they expect you to do.
Nevertheless, I was able to get this on to a new installation of Windows XP on this machine. Although I had install the software earlier and had to reinstall the operating system, somehow I was able to install the Dragon product again and enter the license key again and somehow it was able to activate property. I'm not sure how that works. Maybe they have a secret place where they hide the cookie in your hard drive, or something like that. Anyway, they did not nag me about trying to install on a separate computer. I am glad they got that figured out.
Overall, I'm very happy with the product and I use it on a daily basis. Using this product makes my computer use much more pleasurable and productive in my personal life. At my age says not too many things I can do because of my health limitations. I appreciate having something that makes it a little bit easier to work with computers. Although I have had many years experience using computer systems, I am not able to type fast and my vision is lot not allow me to pick up a lot of things that are visual clues. So having this speech recognition product is one of the best investments I've ever made.
Well, it's time to stop dictation here. Some kind of background program is complaining about something that I don't understand. But the problem is not coming from Dragon NaturallySpeaking, it's coming from some of those crazy programs that run in the background and claim to help improve my computer experience and proceed to annoy me with messages that pop up on my screen all I'm trying to dictate something.
End of my post. I'm going to turn off the microphone now. 

[DaveLembke]

Interesting... I've never used this software to do anything more than to Voice to text to a word document years ago and all the corrections I had to make afterwards made it sort of a pain to use. Its one thing if your sort of forced to have to use it due to a handicap of some kind but for myself I am pretty much sticking with my keyboard for as long as I can.

My experience with it was that it forced me to open my mouth more when I speak with better pronunciation and try to avoid saying stuff with my accent as well as some words that I say it gets confused with easily as well as I also roll my words together at times because I talk fast and it gets all fouled up with this so it made me feel like I was having to talk slower and it was sort of frustrating.

I think fast and I talk very fast and to have to slow it down to match the limitations of software to me made for a painful experience among my accent getting into the mix and I say words different than many others.

Most commonly alternate pronunciate ..... just side tracked by spell checker here...

Its bad enough that Im getting spell checked on the word Pronunciate and I am like I know its spelled correct and google tells me this stuff, so my urban language type may also be a problem for Dragon in addition to the spell checker here at CH  :

"Pronunciate" is a word that isn't listed in most dictionaries; Dictionary.com does mention it, but it noted that "pronunciate" is used rarely. If you use it, most people will think that you meant to use "pronounce" but screwed up.

Urban Dictionary: pronunciate
pronunciate. A merging of the words "pronounce" and "enunciate" that emphasizes the gist of each's meaning. Basically, it means to speak more clearly.

Ok after that comical finding on google that I am using words that arent in most dictionaries, I was going to say that the words below and how I say ( pronunciate ) them as a small sample of what fouls up Voice to Text software.

Water = Wood-der vs Waw-Ter
Toilet = Toll-Let  vs Toy-Let
Radiator = Rad-ee-ate-or vs Ray-De-ate-tor
Walk = wawk vs wallk
talking = tawkin vs tall-king
You = yuh vs you ( only sometimes its yuh, most commonly yuh is in a sentence with a question while if its you dont like someone it will be, I dont like you, but I dont say I dont like yuh. Although I have heard others use it in this use back where I grew up very close to NYC in Bergen County, New Jersey where I lived until I was 15 and moved to New Hampshire where there is another interesting way that words are said. )

And stuff like What are you doing? Rolls together like Wuda-yadoin?

Its interesting to note though that when typing text. Slang and accent is just about gone. While in my head I just realized I said just about gone as Justa-bowt gone in the rolling together of words which if I said it in voice form to a voice to text program like dragon it might show justa bowt gone.

Well enough said about it ... once again in my head I am hearing it as said-dabowdit.

My way that I talk use to be worse. I went to speech class when in school to correct for a lot of it  ( ala-dovit ) but its the way i am I guess. But it doesnt work well with Voice to Text. 

Would be interesting to have someone speak Jive to the Voice to Text and see what it comes up with. The Speak Jive popped into my head from a scene on the movie Airplane a long time ago that a guy was talking Jive and people couldnt understand him and one woman said oh, I speak Jive and was able to communicate with him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCjbJ6NEfc

[strollin]

My wife bought me the Dragon software a few years ago when I had an issue with my arm and couldn't type.  I installed the software and tried to go through the voice training but could never complete the training (it couldn't recognize something I was saying no matter how many times I said it) so never used the software.  I still have it around here somewhere but felt it was more effort than it was worth.

[Salmon Trout]

pronunciate

Most people would consider pronunciate to be a mistaken blending of pronounce and enunciate. Does Dragon allow adding custom words, or must you speak like the BBC?

[Geek-9pm]

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"Pronunciate" is a word that isn't listed in most dictionaries; Dictionary.com does mention it, but it noted that "pronunciate" is used rarely. If you use it, most people will think that you meant to use "pronounce" but screwed up.May 8, 2014

most of this is from dictation with a little bit of typing required.
The spell checker does not like that word.

here is a line from dictation.
Let's see what Dragon does with the word pronunciation.
Okay, in the above it changed it to pronunciation and did not recognize that I actually said pronunciate.

All right, I went and added a new word to the vocabulary. I just typed in the word that I wanted to use and then it prompted me for a couple of examples of the pronunciation. SoI say pronunciate as being that proper pronunciation of pronunciate.
Does that answer your question?

[DaveLembke]

Cool so it can be taught new words then I guess. I never played with it enough to get this far. To me it was frustrating that I had to say something 5 times and it was still wrong. For some people it might work well for, but for me, it didnt like me.