Nuance ScanSoft Dragon Dictate - 2.5 Reviewer’s Guide
Dragon Dictate 2.5
Reviewer’s Guide
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Thank you for your interest in reviewing Dragon Dictate 2.5, the world’s most
accurate and best-selling speech recognition application for the Mac. We hope that t he
following pages will serve as a helpful reference during the course of your review.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What’s New in Dragon Dictate 2.5 3-5
Sample Tests for Review of Dragon Dictate 2.5 6-11
Press Contact Information 12
Addendum: Command Cheat Sheet
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What’s New in Dragon Dictate 2.5?
Summary:
With improved accuracy and faster performance, amazing technology advances, and
powerful new voice commands, Dragon Dictate 2.0 delivered a faster, better and simply
smarter speech recognition solution. In the year since Dragon Dictate 2.0’s release,
Nuance has continued to explore ways to make the software even easier to use. The
result is Dragon Dictate 2.5 (a free upgra de for version 2.0 cust omers), a release jampacked with new product features and improvements to existing capabilities.
Dragon Dictate 2.5 delivers far more than a traditional software point release.
With Dragon Dictate 2.5, users can now seamlessly combine dictation with mouse and
keyboard input in Microsoft Word 2011, the most comm only used application for Dragon
Dictate customers. For those familiar with Dragon Dictate, this means no more “Golden
Rule” of not mixing typing and talking! What’s more, iPhone users can take advantage
of the new Dragon Remote Microphone application. This free app turns your iPhone into
a wireless microphone for use with Dragon on your Mac.
Dictate 2.5 gives Mac users the ability to more finely control how Drag on formats text
such as dates, times, numbers and addresses, ensuring that Dragon works the way that
you work. New voice comm and s, such as the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter,
help version 2.5 customers get more done on their Mac. And the improved user profile
creation process enables even younger Mac users to easily get started with speech
recognition.
Details:
x Advanced Technology – It’s been over 14 years since the first version of Dragon
NaturallySpeaking debuted, and millions of hours of data, decades of research
and hundreds of the best brains in speech science have made Dragon the smart,
accurate speech recognition that it is today. Despite the sophisticated nature of
speech recognition, Dragon’s “brain” works behind the scenes, so you can focus
on creating and communicating by voice at speeds up to three times faster than
typing – without the software getting in the way .
x Accurate – With the int roduction of Dragon Dictate 2.0, customers experienced
an improvement in accuracy of 15 percent compared to Dragon Dictate 1.5.
This m eans Dragon recognizes speech more accurately right out of the box, s o
people will spend less time correcting recognition errors.
x Enhanced Hardware and Software Support – Dictate 2.5 allows users to seamlessly
combine dictation with manual input from the mouse and keyboard while
working with Microsoft Word 2011. This ability to “mix talking and typing” within
Microsoft Word was the most requested product enhancement from our
customers. In addition, Dictate 2.5 offers built-in voice commands for controlling
Microsoft Word 2011. These voice commands allow users to format text, insert
tables and graphics, and control menu items by voice. Dragon Dictate 2.5 also
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works with other popular Mac applications: Apple’s Pages, Mail, TextEdit, iChat,
Keynote, iCal, Safari, and more.
x New Dragon Remote Mic App – Most customers use Dragon by speaking directly
to their computer using the microphone included with their Dragon software
purchase. But some people can be frustrated by wearing a headset that tethers
them to their Mac. With the introduction of t he free Dragon Remote Microphone
application (available in the Apple app store), Dragon users can achieve the
same great accurate transcription using a device many already have: the
iPhone! The Dragon Remote Microphone app converts a user’s iPhone 3G, 3GS
and 4, iPad and iPad 2 or iPod Touch 4th gen running iOS 4.2 or later into a
wireless microphone via WiFi.
x TimeJSaving Voice Commands and Shortcuts – Dragon Dictate 2.0 offered an
easy way to search for information, files and content anywhere on your Mac or
on the Web by using single voice commands. Dragon Dictate 2.5 includes new
commands to update social status on Facebook and Twitter:
o “Post to Facebook [I love Dragon]”
o “Post to Twitter [Tweeting is so much easier by voice]”
o “Search Google for hula dancing lessons”
o “Search Bing for wedding dress repair”
o “Search Yahoo for gondola rentals”
o “Search Mail for RSVP”
o “Search Mac for history term paper”
x Getting Started with Dragon is Faster and Easier –DragonDictate2.0madeit
easier than e ver to upgrade your software by automatically detecting existing
user data and setting up a new and improv ed Profi le with each upgrade. Dragon
Dictate 2.5 includes more updates to the Voice Training component of user
profile creation, and introduces new additional training text to help get the best
recognition accuracy possible.
x Improved Formatting Control – With Dragon Dictate 2.5, new formatting options
make it easier to control the appearance of certain words and numbers.
o Formatting Enhancements: With the new Auto Formatting dialog, users
have greater control over the way certain data is formatted. Individual
preferences can be set for dates and t ime (e.g., June 18, 2011 vs.
6/18/11), numbers and units of measure (e.g., five vs. 5), addresses,
abbreviations, and more. Users can also set a preference to insert two
spaces after a period, if they choose.
o Numbers Mode: Version 2.5 introduces Numbers Mode, which can be
particularly helpful for users that frequently dictate many numbers in a
row, such as inputting figures or product codes into a database. When in
Numbers Mode, Dragon recognizes everything it hears as a number or as
acommand.
x User Interface and Usability Enhancements – With the new Auto Sleep
Microphone feature in Dictate 2.5, if the microphone is on but does not receive
input after one mi nute, the microphone will automatically go into Sleep mode.
This Auto Sleep functionality is helpful as it forces users t o follow effective
microphone control even when you forget to turn the microphone off. With
version 2.5, users can set personal preference for the time allotted for t he Auto
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