Good Grape Wine Company

Please contact me at LELawson@aol.com


Make This Book Your Bible!   February 27, 2000
I am a court reporter who is using continuous speech recognition software to produce transcripts and to do realtime reporting. I am considered to be an advanced user and have assisted and consulted many other people on speech recognition products. This book immediately became invaluable to me. "Dragon Naturally Speaking Complete" gives the reader a well-rounded understanding of the basic mechanics of state-of-the-art speech recognition products on the market, and then serves as a compass to guide them through how to best apply this technology.

I receive numerous calls and e-mails every week covering a fairly wide range of speech recognition issues. I answer those questions as best I can, but usually I feel like the person needs more information than I can give them at the time to understand the software and hardware well enough to achieve their goals. This book covers almost every aspect of speech recognition that I have had to deal with. Paid consultants might want to keep this gem under their hat, because this book will empower its readers to a very high degree. This book not only gives its reader insight to methods and techniques to rapidly build their speech recognition skills, but it also gives a very good explanation of hardware issues concerning speech recognition. The authors also have given numerous references to sites, products and newsgroups that are invaluable resources.

Before buying the book, I thought the book might turn out to be too technical in nature for many people. Those concerns were quelled after reading just the first few pages. This book is written clearly enough so that a novice to speech recognition can understand it, and then be incrementally elevated to a high level of proficiency. If some thought and common sense is applied, the reader will be elevated to an advanced level. I consider this compendium to be a speech recognition treatise, only written so we mere mortals can understand!


DNS Resource and Guide   February 10, 2000
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

I have gone thru almost all the book so far and I find that is full of tips to make my speech recognition use a better experience. Yes, it is true that in some instances I would like to see more macros, but that would require a devoted book on the subject. I am a software trainer and I always find that different audiences have different expectatives and sometimes they find I have not met them. Good work and I congratulate the authors for the effort on putting so much information at hand.


Virtually Useless   February 9, 2000
 6 out of 15 found this review helpful

There is lots of prose, and Hundreds of mostly useless tables. I got almost no usable information out of this book. For instance, I foolishly expected the chapter on using NaturallySpeaking with physical disabilities to contain some sort of insights on approaches or macros to use for various types of disability. Instead, the chapter largely consists of a list of websites for various accessibility-related business concerns.

The manuals that already come with the product are much more informative than this book.


Refer to Dragon NaturallySpeaking Complete...Slay the Dragon   January 30, 2000
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is a thorough, up to date (1/2000) reference on how to get the most out of your speech recognition product, particularly Dragon. It is replete with information starting from the "nuts and bolts" and encompassing details on hardware and software, microphones, recorders, sound cards, USB connections...you name it. It is well-written and made easy to comprehend by folks who obviously are most knowledgeable, have a subtle sense of humor, and who love and use computerized speech recognition because they have found ways to make their daily work more efficient(and fun!), and want to share what they've learned. They've also shared their macros and other useful program utilities, which are contained on the included CD-Rom. If the answers to your questions about getting the most out of speech recognition are not provided within these pages, then they don't exist. This book is easily the most cost-effective "upgrade" you can buy, helping to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of your speech recognition product for a mere few dollars. I recommend it particularly for medical or legal professionals seeking to incorporate speech recognition into their everyday practices, as well as for other perhaps less demanding uses...but certainly for anyone who has already made the leap, or considering to incorporate speech recognition hardware and software, and wanting to get the most from their hard-earned dollars.

Michael