Yet there’s an obvious answer: speech recognition. It’s been an option for decades, but in the last few years it’s evolved to become incredibly powerful. Where speech recognition used to involve effort and training before it worked, it’s now the easiest and most natural way to write or control your PC. As anyone who’s used Apple’s Sir or Google Now will know, we can now talk to our smartphones and get useful information back, but Nuance’s Dragon Professional Individual v.15 takes speech recognition to another level. It makes talking the power-user’s option, both in the office and at home. Making speech easier With Dragon Professional you can concentrate more on what you’re writing and less on the business of typing. What’s more, it’s hassle-free. The setup process gets you up and running within minutes and the software works effectively right out of the box – up to 15% more accurately than the previous version. It’s also more intelligent in its formatting and punctuation, so you don’t have to spell out what ‘two point four’ or ‘joe dot bloggs at outlook dot com’ means. While the recognition’s brilliant straight away, it still gets better the more you use it. Nuance’s new Deep Learning Technology – inspired by the way our brains process speech – learns as you dictate, growing to understand individual voice patterns and accents and adapting to the acoustics of the room. Available for the first time in a PC application, it can enable Dragon Professional to reach 99% accuracy. Making speech more practical Typing’s slow, you might argue, but it works. Can speech recognition really cut it outside of ideal conditions? Well, with the latest version Nuance has worked hard to make speech recognition work for anyone, almost anywhere. It’ll learn accents and speech patterns, even handling two different speakers in a recorded interview or conference call. Nor are noisy environments a problem. Even with office hubbub or a noisy home in the background, it adapts and understands. There’s no headset necessary, either. It works perfectly well with a laptop’s built-in microphone or you can use a smartphone as an external mic. Making speech more convenient Speech should enable you to use the devices you want to use when you want to use them, and Dragon Professional now works more effectively on Windows tablets and convertibles. If you’re travelling, you can dictate and even control your computer through voice and leave that add-on keyboard in the bag. Alternatively, you can use the Dragon Anywhere app on your Smartphone then sync with Dragon Professional on your PC – all the same training and profile information will come through. Dragon Professional makes speech recognition work for everyone. If you find typing slows you down, give it a try. To find out more visit Nuance Dragon Professional Individual
