Michael Burns   November 2006

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"For me it's a lifesaver," said Paul Langer, an attorney at the Chicago office of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. "I never learned to type."

His alternative to the keyboard is speech recognition (SR) software, in this case Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) from Nuance Communications Inc. in Burlington, Mass. Now in Version 9.0, the introduction of DNS a decade ago marked the birth of continuous speech recognition -- previous SR software required the user to pause between words.

Lamont Wood May 18, 2007 (Computerworld)

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After a quick training session, in which I read some text and the software scanned some of my columns and e-mails to assess my writing style, I was ready to go. As long as I spoke relatively clear and at a normal pace (Nuance recommends not speaking slowly or too quickly), the software figured out what I was saying.

Cool Tools by Keith Shaw (Network World 22/02/07)

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I’m writing this story in a way that is a little scary for me. For the first time in my life, I’m not using the keyboard to write. I’m dictating the story using speech recognition software called Dragon Naturally Speaking from Nuance Communications Inc.
    For a writer, using speech recognition software like this is unnatural. But considering that this is the first time I ever used this software, it’s impressive that I’m able to use it right out of the box with almost no preparation.

Andrew Gluck (Financial Advisor March 2007)

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I would like to introduce you to one of my new best friends - Dragon Naturally Speaking software.  I have used stenographers, I have written on yellow pads longhand, I have dictated into tape recorders.  All of that effort has provided the practice that can help with using the Dragon software.  To create a document with Dragon, you speak the words into a headset microphone connected to your computer and the software converts what you say into a word, excel or program document. 

Richard Oppenheim, CPA, CITP (Exert from AccountingSoftware.com)

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You decide what you are going to say. You say the words. They appear on the screen. You're done.

That's what writing with speech recognition -- specifically, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 9.0 -- amounts to. The lifetime it took to achieve a smooth keyboarding rate of 60 words per minute no longer matters. The skill you effortlessly mastered as a child -- talking -- is all that's required to input text to your computer.

Lamont Wood    (Computerworld Magazine May 18, 2007)

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Until recently, most speech-recognition users toiled in hyperspecialized fields (like medical transcription) or suffered physical disabilities, like repetitive-stress injuries, that impeded keyboarding. Now more customers are just normal desk jockeys who are trying to boost productivity. Stanley Riemer is the managing partner at a Boston law firm who uses Dragon to answer 200 e-mails a day—often at home in the evenings, while sitting in a comfortable chair with his hands folded in his lap. "I never touch the keyboard unless I feel like it," he says. With a noise-filtering microphone, he can even watch Red Sox games while he e-mails. "It's changed my entire work style," Riemer says. And as the practice grows, talking to yourself may become not a marker of madness, but the sign of a high-efficiency worker.

Daniel Mcginn (Newsweek May 28, 2007)

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