[MV] macspeech vs dns

[Joseph Senecal]

On Sep 18, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Nina Sugar, MD wrote:

>> Help please!
>> I need to buy a voice recogniton/dictation program for macbook pro  
>> w/intel 2ghz core duo processor.
>> I am running osx v 10.4.10.
>> What are the pro and cons of macspeech/ilisten vs dns?(I believe I  
>> would have to get a windows running program for the DNS, and I am  
>> not sure I could run it. I love my mac and the os systems, and  
>> have never been able to understand windows)
>> I need to be able to dictate patient notes,  on a daily basis, and  
>> writing has become difficult due to back injuries from being rear  
>> ended and now wrist tendonitis. Any information/suggestions / 
>> reccomendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
>> nina sugar

I've never used any Windows dictation products, so I can't give you a  
direct comparison. However, over the years I have used every  
dictation program produced for the Mac (PowerSecretary, ViaVoice, and  
iListen). Of all of these iListen was the best. The other programs  
were better in some areas, but only iListen supported continuous  
dictation with correction into any application.

Any dictation program is going to take some effort to use  
effectively. The program will have to be trained to recognize your  
voice (though required training is shorter now) and you will have to  
train yourself to dictate instead of type. Also you'll need to teach  
iListen about the vocabulary you are using. You can do this by giving  
iListen samples of your writing to analyze (I think these need to be  
plain text files), or you can train each word as you use it. Training  
a new word is easy enough, you say the word, and when iListen gets it  
wrong you correct it. If iListen has never seen the word before, it  
will put up an add word window where you can fine tune what gets  
typed and what you say to get that word. It includes a phonetic  
editor, but I usually don't need to edit that, and even when I do, I  
can usually manage without actually learning the phoneme code by  
having iListen generate phoneme codes for similar sounding words and  
editing the results.

I use iListen for writing programs, something it was never designed  
to do, yet it does it reasonably well. I've heard from doctors that  
were very happen with iListen, and from doctors that weren't. While  
iListen doesn't have a medical dictionary, apparently that doesn't  
keep it from being used to dictate medical terms.

I suggest trying iListen first because it is a Mac program (and thus  
doesn't require you to learn anything about Windows), and because  
it's an inexpensive program for what it does. I think Windows alone  
would cost more. You will also get a microphone that works well with  
Mac hardware (it requires a stronger signal than PCs do). If it  
doesn't work for you, you can then take the bigger step to try DNS,  
which will require buying windows, buying Parallels (if you want to  
continue running the Mac OS), and buying DNS. I think DNS will only  
dictate into Windows applications, so you'll have to cut and paste  
your results into whatever application you're using on the Mac.

I hope this helps.

Joe Senecal

P.S. I bought iListen before it was released, but didn't start really  
using it till version 1.6.4