posted by
Seth Azria on November 17, 2011 00:55
Years ago, before going to law school, I thought that being able to type quickly would be a good idea. Little did I know that typing is really not the issue in law school. Nevertheless I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I thought it was okay although I did not really need it.
Now as a practicing lawyer, typing quickly seems to mean a lot more. So, I visited Nuance, and bought Dragon dictation 2.5 for the Mac. I just installed it today, and so far I think it is pretty good. In fact, I am writing this post using it, and it has not made a single error.
For a microphone, I am using my Bluetooth headset that is paired with my iPhone. You do not actually need to connect a microphone to the computer because the signal goes right over your Wi-Fi network through their free application in the App Store.
I also bought a Mac speech scribe. With this application, you can record files and it will transcribe them for you. I have tried this also and think it works pretty well however, I think it may be too early to make a decision. But like Dragon dictation, Mac speech scribe has an iPhone application that allows you to record your voice on the iPhone to the Mac and then transfer those files via a Wi-Fi connection accessed through Safari. That portion of it is pretty slick.
So if you like to write things much quicker, I think Dragon naturally speaking is a good way to go. I wrote this post in about 3 min.
Dragon dictation works anywhere you can type. I just use it to rename a file and to add this section of the post after moving the text from Google Docs to my HTML editor on my site.