Dragon Naturally Speaking

Dragon Naturally Speaking

Does anyone here use the program?

In 1980 I went to a movie called “Being There”. There was a scene in the movie where a very rich guy was talking and there was a computer screen nearby that was showing his conversation as he was talking. I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be an efficient way to input speech in an application. So I looked into it but I don’t think there was a commercial program that could do that. Sometime after that I learned about Dragon Naturally Speaking and I began to use it, more as a lark.

A few years later I broke my little finger on my left hand (I am left-handed) playing volleyball and had a cast which made it very difficult to type, so I decided to get serious about using Dragon.

I bought a really good microphone and had an external card to plug the mike into to reduce the internal electrical interference generated by the computer internals. I upgraded Dragon as new “improved” versions became available. For it to work efficiently (display your words quickly to make corrections), you need a powerful computer.

I got pretty damn good at using it. I even showed a class of mine that I could construct an Excel spreadsheet without touching the keyboard or mouse. It was a stretch however.

Anyway somewhere along the line I quit using it and want to restart using it. I am wondering if anyone has a suggestion as to a good microphone as my old microphone doesn’t work.