Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 for Pocket PC/Desktop Review

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pocketpcaddict.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4339' target='_blank'>http://www.pocketpcaddict.com/modul...iewtopic&t=4339</a><br /><br /></div><i>"What would you do if you could cut the amount of time you spend every day typing e-mails, making forum posts, typing in reports and otherwise putting fingers to keyboard to communicate your message? For several years there have been companies such as IBM and ScanSoft whose aim has been to allow you to simply talk into a microphone and have that voice translated into text. Considering you can speak at hundreds words a minute, the potential of getting more work done in a shorter period of time is phenomenal. Writing the Great American novel while you sit back in your chair (or even lying flat on a bed) with eyes closed, hands at your side, while playing music into your headphones would suddenly become within the grasp of just about every person...literate or not."</i> <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/SS1.JPG" /> <br /><br />If the idea of using your Pocket PC as a dictation device excites you, check out this review. I used to be a big fan of Dragon Naturally Speaking, but gave up on it a couple of years ago because it seemed like even with 99% accuracy, I still had to reach for the keyboard at least once per dictated sentence.

[bluevolume]

:?:
Did I read the review wrong, or does it really say that you can't use the Dragon software on the PPC without it being attached to a regular PC? What is the point?

[silver99]

I agree, if the Pocket PC can't translate it then basically it's just a glorified audio recorder that you must dock to translate on a PC.

I wonder if you could record a WAV or MP3 and import that into speech recognition program to translate. If so then there would be no need for the PPC software.

Still aways off from what I would call truly portable and usable in the field. Software designed for the PPC that eliminates the desktop component is truly where it's at!

[JonnoB]

Microsoft at one time showed a demonstration whereby a PPC would allow a user to record (dictate) in real time and via a wireless network, the audio was streamed to a powerful desktop computer to transalate the spoken words into written text and streamed back to the Pocket PC.

If accuracy were good enough, I can see a SIP module that did nothing more than capture audio and collect back text from a remote server.

[Marcel_Proust]

Microsoft at one time showed a demonstration whereby a PPC would allow a user to record (dictate) in real time and via a wireless network, the audio was streamed to a powerful desktop computer to transalate the spoken words into written text and streamed back to the Pocket PC.

If accuracy were good enough, I can see a SIP module that did nothing more than capture audio and collect back text from a remote server.

But you would need a number of steps to work well. With Pocket PCs now at 624 mhz, why can't we have a real stand alone program?

[geneb]

What ever happened to VoiceCentral by Fonix? This was supposed to work entirely on the Pocket PC. Has anyone here ever tried it?

[Phillip Dyson]

Its a little disappointing. My Toshiba came with Voice Command and Text to Speech software. It would be great to have Speech to Text capabilities as well.

[capo]

"What ever happened to VoiceCentral by Fonix? This was supposed to work entirely on the Pocket PC. Has anyone here ever tried it?"

I have VIA Voice (it came bundled with my old iPaq 3835) and could never get it to work reasonably on either my 3835 or my current 4155. A while back I bought Fonix Voice Alert and couldn't get reasonable results from it either. Fonix claims it can use a custom dictionary but I couldn't find any way to set one up. My multiple emails to Fonix tech support were completely ignored. Handango even tried to contact them on my behalf as well, also unsuccessfully. Eventually Handango was kind enough to refund my money (I buy a fair amount of software from them and will continue to do so - I've found their support to be very good). Fonix, on the other hand will never get another dollar from me, now will I hesitate to make others aware of the poor experience I had with them.

The happy ending is that I eventually bought Microsoft's Voice Command. It's pretty limited in functionality, but what it does it does very well, at least for me on my iPaq.

[tourdewolf]

I wonder if you could record a WAV or MP3 and import that into speech recognition program to translate. If so then there would be no need for the PPC software.




DNS will translate wav files. Not sure about mp3, yet.

[jasondearyou]

I must say that this is somewhat dissapointing in that it doesn't translate on the PPC. Whats the use. I would like to speak, then edit, then print. See me when you can do the DNS.

:D 0X

[PocketPC Addict]

:?:
Did I read the review wrong, or does it really say that you can't use the Dragon software on the PPC without it being attached to a regular PC? What is the point?

The Pocket PC acts as a recorder and is used to create a profile that is housed on the desktop PC. You can do your recording wherever you want but you must dock the PPC and use the desktop to transcribe your recording.

[PocketPC Addict]

DNS will translate wav files. Not sure about mp3, yet.

No MP3 yet.

[jonathanchoo]

But you would need a number of steps to work well. With Pocket PCs now at 624 mhz, why can't we have a real stand alone program?

Because 624Mhz ARM processors are not powerful enough. With PocketPC Transriber still can't accurately translate my handwriting, I doubt it can translate voice very well.

But I do think the technology is there.

Take Ectaco Voice Translator for example. I can speak into my PocketPC which the program will then match my tonation with its database to bring out the text of what I spoke and translate it to another language. But that is with a fixed database and it certaintly can't transcribe my voice in real time into words not in the database.

[Robb Bates]

Because 624Mhz ARM processors are not powerful enough.

I wonder why. I have an old 233 Pentium, which I suspect isn't THAT much more powerful, if at all, than my 400 MHz Xscale and I can use Kurzweil Voice Plus to dictate. No, it's no the best speech to text software, but it does work and gets at least 98% accuracy when trained. We're not asking for our PPCs to understand us like the computers on Star Trek. Just something simple enough so we can dictate simple, discreet word speech. It's got to be able to do at least that.

Speaking of Pentium vs. Xscale, does anyone know how they compare on a pure processing power standpoint?

Robb

[Jonathan1]

OT: Can someone. Anyone tell me what the name of the battery monitor on the top of the screen is called?!?! I've spent days going over freeware sites, pocketgear, handango, etc and for the life of me I can't find the dang thing. Help please before my head explodes from the frustration!! 8O

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/SS1.JPG

Thanks. Back to your regularly scheduled topic. :)

[Jonathon Watkins]

OT: Can someone. Anyone tell me what the name of the battery monitor on the top of the screen is called?!?!

You mean the horizontal bars of Pocket Plus (http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/pocketplus/?en)? (Check the 'visual tour' for more screenshots).

[Jonathan1]

You mean the horizontal bars of Pocket Plus (http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/pocketplus/?en)? (Check the 'visual tour' for more screenshots).


[Sanity=1] Thanks. :)

[jonathanchoo]

Speaking of Pentium vs. Xscale, does anyone know how they compare on a pure processing power standpoint?

Robb

A PII 233 MMX has a Whetstone benchmark of around 270 MFLOPS and Dhrystone index of 620 MIPS. According to Toms Hardware using the popular PC benchmark program SiSoft Sandra, the 400Mhz XScale found on the Dell Axim X3i has a benchmark results of 406 MIPS and 7 MFLOPS.

[jonathanchoo]

I wonder why. I have an old 233 Pentium, which I suspect isn't THAT much more powerful, if at all, than my 400 MHz Xscale and I can use Kurzweil Voice Plus to dictate.

Robb

It might not feel powerful, but your 233Mhz Pentium can run Windows XP (barely). Can the XScale do that?

X-Scales are essentially RISC processors. Now RISC has less intructions built into therefore its smaller and uses less power. However because it takes a series of instructions to complete a task, the number of instructions that are read from memory is thus larger and take longer.

CISC processors such as the x86 processors (Athlon/Pentium) and 68k processors has instructions built into them which can operate sevel low-level operations such as aritmetic operations in a single instruction. All those instructions that AMD and Intel keeps putting into their x86 processors such as MMX, SSE2, 3DNow! etc really helps boost the performance level of the processors whatever clock speed they may be running.

The performance of a CPU is not only determined by the clock speed but also the bus speed and cache size. Why do you think Intel's flagship Pentium 4 EE at 3.4Ghz is losing in many benchmarks to a 2.4Ghz AMD Athlon64?

[LarDude]

:?:
Did I read the review wrong, or does it really say that you can't use the Dragon software on the PPC without it being attached to a regular PC? What is the point?

The Pocket PC acts as a recorder and is used to create a profile that is housed on the desktop PC. You can do your recording wherever you want but you must dock the PPC and use the desktop to transcribe your recording.

3 Words: How incredibly *LAME*

Hey, how's this for a new gadget/program (while excitedly rubbing my hands together):
Let's.....
- record our voice messages into a pocket tape recorder
- then replay the recorded message whilst re-recording it on our PPCs
- then dock our PPCs to transcribe it on our desktop
(Oooohhhh-Aaaahhhh, way cool!)

[LarDude]

If the idea of using your Pocket PC as a dictation device excites you, check out this review. I used to be a big fan of Dragon Naturally Speaking, but gave up on it a couple of years ago because it seemed like even with 99% accuracy, I still had to reach for the keyboard at least once per dictated sentence.

I had the same experience and completely agree. It's amazing...even with 99% accuracy, if one considers that there could be 500-600 words on a page, this could mean (with a simplistic approximation) 6 errors per page. Unacceptable.
(Of course, in reality, many of the same words are used over and over again, so the error rate could be less -- but what if "you" pronounced some of these common words in a way the program had trouble with, then the error rate could be much higher). Ultimately, I guess I don't know how they define 99% accuracy.