Recommendations and suggestions for Dragon NaturallySpeaking editions.
With Professional, Legal, and Medical editions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, we assume that one has a system capable of effectively using its features:
Focus first on upgrading your system or acquiring a new system if it does not meet the suggested configuration.
Questions and answers about your needs to help determine which version to consider.
Are you working in Law Enforcement?
You need Professional if you want to do substantial automation.
Is your writing “legal” in style and vocabulary?
You will get essentially the same results with Professional or Preferred, IF you use the Vocabulary Builder. But at the current pricing, the added cost for Legal over Professional is insignificant.
Are you, or will you be using an EMR?
If so, the choice is made for you. Don't even think about buying anything but Medical unless you are certain you are not and will not be using an EMR. Even if an EMR that you use for dictation works with Release 10 there is no guarantee that it will work when updates to Release 10 occur. The other editions (Professional, Preferred) may not work with your EMR! These restrictions start with Release 10, in August 2008, so any information prior to that must be confirmed.
If using an EMR which has these restrictions, then your choice is between the Medical and the Small Practice Editions. If you are a hospital, a practice of over 50 physicians, or wish to use the radiology or pathology language models, then you must choose Medical over Small Practice.
If you do not use an EMR, then you can do further analysis. Is your writing “medical” in style and vocabulary?
Release 9 of NaturallySpeaking includes 14 different medical vocabularies. These include named vocabularies for radiology, pathology, cardiology, emergency medicine, ObGyn, General Medicine, general practice, neurology, oncology, pediatrics, gastroenterology, orthopedics, and mental health. Many other specialties (e.g. dentistry, dermatology, urology, etc.) have vocabulary included within these vocabularies. A Nuance TechNote documents the other supported specialties and the recommended vocabulary. Normally we suggest using these language models instead of those supplied by third-party vendors. There are a few specialties where third-party vocabularies were appropriate, but the restrictions introduced in Release 10 on using Professional/Preferred with EMR's make those vocabularies less desireable.
Release 10 provides a much longer list of specialties when you create your user files.
Are you part of a large organization? If so, we can help you create custom vocabularies that can be distributed to other users of the Professional/Medical products. Alternately, contact us regarding other development methodologies whereby we can create custom commands that can be used with ANY version of NaturallySpeaking.
Are you writing the Great American Novel? Are you writing your memoirs? Preferred or Standard work well for these tasks, where typically there is little repetitive work.
Do you write multiple styles of material? For instance, do you practice law during the day but have a hobby of writing mystery stories on the weekend? If so, the Professional/Medical/Legal products allow multiple "topics" per person which will save you time.
If you do data collection, then there can be outstanding benefits of using the Professional Edition to expedite the recording of your data. Dictating directly into spreadsheets, or dictating data into a recorder then playing it back to be processed into spreadsheets, tables, or other organized and regular formats may take a while to set up, but can save huge amounts of time.
Simple data collection using Excel can be done using the Preferred Edition, particularly if you are willing to use the keyboard to navigate between spreadsheet cells.
Are you buying for a group of users? If so, and you need/want to automate using speech commands, there are development alternatives allowing addition of speech commands to all versions of NaturallySpeaking:
There was at one time a serious competitor to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the IBM ViaVoice product line. But it hasn't been updated in several years so now is not a viable competitor. Reviews:
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Both of these reviews are by people willing to spend many hours with each product and have good audio equipment, unlike most magazine reviewers who spend little time before drawing conclusions.
Microsoft has speech recognition included with Office-XP, Office-2003, and Windows Vista.
With Windows Vista, many report good accuracy for ordinary prose. Some aspects of the program, such as web surfing, are very good. But the user interface still lacks the refinement of NaturallySpeaking. Specialized vocabulary is difficult to support with Windows Vista speech recognition.
With the Office-XP and Office-2003 versions of speech recognition, there were occasional persons who reported good results. Most persons reported poor results with the Office-XP product, results were better with the version included with Office-2003.
Philips has continuous speech technology but most often works with high-end software/hardware suppliers to embed their technology into other products. These are mainly aimed at speeding up the transcription process where one person dictates and another person reviews/edits/corrects the document.
We're also happy to discuss your needs with you to help ensure you get the products and accessories best suited for your particular needs.
If you're ready to purchase, Dragon NaturallySpeaking is available through our online store.
Updated November 2007
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