Do you use Speech-to-Text programs?

[Bob]

And are you satisfied? Once upon a time, when I had Vista, I did use it, but I didn't find it quite useful. It might prove useful only for people who are typing with two fingers. It's so slow, and the words you get are not always as correct as necessary to pass some kind of "usefulness threshold". No matter how much you "train" the program.

[DanielScocco]

I don't use it that often. I only tried with some free web tools, and most of them were not good enough.

I never tried a dedicated software for that purpose though, so don't know how good they are.

[Ramoney]

I tried implementing this a few years ago when I was running XP for the same reasons you gave Bob (slow, two finger typer) but it didn't work too well and got me into some trouble.

For example, ever e-mailed your aunt asking for a fork and the word 'fork' was spelled into something else? :o

The good news is I learned to type faster and with a lot more fingers since then :D

[susabelle]

Speech to text software is still in its infancy. I actually wrote a blog article about it at geeknewscentral.com last week. I work in disability services, and we use Dragon Naturally Speaking here for our students who need it.

It is not a replacement for actual typing for most people, but for those that can't type due to an impairment, it is a Godsend.

You have to train it, the more the better (we say 6-8 hours minimum) and you have to speak slowly and be ready to fix errors as they happen (fixing errors is part of training the program to do what you want). There is nothing fast about the process. It isn't magic, it's software.

Maybe in a few years we'll have better products. But I wouldn't be holding my breath!