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| MacSpeech Dictate | 
 enlarge | From: MacSpeech, Inc.
Category: Software
List Price: $199.99
Buy New: $155.00
You Save: $44.99 (22%)
New (14) Used (1) from $155.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 69
Format: Cd-rom
Platform: Mac Os X Intel
Media: CD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.9 x 2.5
MPN: MSDICTATE
Model: MACSPEECH DICTATE
UPC: 806709380876
EAN: 0806709380876
ASIN: B0014KJ6EQ
Release Date: February 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Works best interactively May 24, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
MacSpeech voice recognition is pretty good. But it's not going to get everything. Sometimes we just use phrases the software is not going to get all the time. For example, in the title of this review, I used the word "interactively." MacSpeech Dictate tried "enter actively" and a few others, until I just typed in "interactively." In the body of this review, MacSpeech got "interactively" right every time.
If you don't expect perfection, but work with the software, i.e. making corrections by hand as you dictate, you can get good results. (Good results being defined as lots of written output, not 100% perfection from your dictation software.)
Another difficulty with dictation, is that you're using a different part of the brain to write. Written language and spoken language are not the same, nor does written language and spoken language follow the same path through the brain to the real world. It may be that some of the difficulties you have with writing with dictation software, is difficulty transitioning to dictation from typing. (This can also make it more difficult to proofread dictated text because you used the part of the brain to speak and not the part to write, therefore when you read what has been dictated its not as easy to read it as if you had typed it.) With practice, as YOUR dictation improves, your dictation software's accuracy will also improve.
Another difficulty you may find with dictation, is that it is physically much more work to talk for an hour than it is to type for an hour.
When you first train MacSpeech Dictate, you will be excited with your new software, you will read the training text with enthusiasm and great projection of voice. But as you use the software, you will tire. Your voice will flag. Then -- lo! -- accuracy has fallen. Do not wonder why. Take a break, relax your voice, and save some time to do additional training after dictating for 20 or 30 minutes, when you have a more representative manner of speaking than you did when you were excited about getting the software.
BUGS:
1. MacSpeech is not entirely punctuation aware, so you will have to clean up spacing and capitalization. it's no big deal for a few months when the software is new, but I expect this to be fixed in future updates.
2. MacSpeech does not seem to be multi-processor aware. hopefully in the future it will be and will thus be faster and more accurate.
Nuance has versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking tailored to different industries. I'd like to see MacSpeech do the same.
To all the reviewers of MacSpeech software here at Amazon, I'd like results from an experiment to be added to your reviews. Time yourself typing a full page of text for work or for school, and time yourself dictating a full page of text--Including corrections--for work or for school, and post the times. I wonder if dictating is actually faster than typing for a majority of users.
This review was typed by MacSpeech Dictate, with some help from me. I had to correct almost all of the capitalization, and spacing, at the beginning of sentences. And I also had to correct what I was writing, as in content, not because MacSpeech Dictate made any mistakes, but because writing is like that. Revise. Revise. Revise. It may be easier for you to mix and match typing and dictating than only one of the other. Be flexible. You don't have to write OR dictate. You can do both.
Hardware:
MacBook Pro / Core 2 Duo / 2GB RAM
MacSpeech included microphone
I also suggest that people interested in speeding up their writing try TypeIt4Me, which is very cheap, and very awesome, and never makes mistakes. When I worked as a medical transcriber, I used TypeIt4Me extensively. There is no way I could have gotten work done anywhere near as fast with dictation software.
Good luck and good writing.
 What a Disappointment May 24, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
After a month of trying to get MacSpeech Dictate to work properly, I've pretty much given up. It's probably the worst software I've ever bought. Certainly the most expensive piece of bad software I've ever bought. It has worked two or three times, but usually it hangs or won't even respond. Installation was okay. I don't have the bad data disk reported by other users.
I've called customer service several times. After a long wait each time, a different solution has been suggested -- create a new user profile, turn off the computer, unplug and plug the microphone, turn the program itself off and on, turn off all the other programs except for the one program I want to dictate into. Sometimes these things have worked temporarily. Mostly they haven't. The bottom line seems to be that MacSpeech Dictate so buggy and unreliable that the support guys at the company don't know how to get it running.
On the few times that the application has worked, it has been truly amazing. I was really looking forward to using speech recognition to reduce the amount of pain caused by typing these days. The program is so bad, though, that it's been a big waste of money.
 Mediocre. May 15, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I spent a fair amount of time getting this trained and working to get this to work. I could not get to the point that it will be useful to me. I dictate every day with a transciption service, and this is not even close to being able to replace it. It was fun to play around with, though. It doesn't seem like it will be anymore than a toy, though. I found that I had to talk so slowly and deliberately - and it still made mistakes - that it wasn't worth the time.
Not QUITE Ready For prime Time May 12, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
No problems with installation or set up. After brief initial training I was pleased to find accuracy that is notably better than I get with Dragon in Windows. However, MacSpeech is missing one of Dragon's most essential functions. It has no commands similar to "Correct That" or "Spell That" in Dragon. There is no way to correct recognition errors except to say the word again or type it in manually. You cannot train the program to correct common recognition errors. There is no way to teach it new words like proper names, technical terms, acronyms, abbreviations etc. This makes MacSpeech far less useful.
Similarly, there is no utility like Dragon's "Add Word" or "Train Word." You can give MacSpeech a list of your documents to analyze for vocabulary and phrasing but you cannot add a new word at a time.
The user manual I downloaded says that these features will come in a future version. Of course, no idea when. For now, MacSpeech is better than my terrible typing on my MacBook but will not be fully useful until these features arrive. With them, I will probably give the product four or five stars.
Works for me thus far May 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Though it's not flawless, it does get the job done pretty well. Suffering from severe carpal in my right hand, it's helped relieve the stress on my hand by allowing me to come up with 1st drafts for articles fairly easily. It has its quirks including on typing "he" when I say "I" sometimes, but overall I have to say I'm satisfied with it.
I however do wish that it would immediately jump to an edit point immediately, rather than having to scan through the entire paragraph to get to the point where I want to edit a word. It's a big time waster and I just insert the cursor using my mouse, which kind of defeats the point of the software.
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