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| From: MacSpeech, Inc.
List Price: $199.99
Buy New: $162.98
You Save: $37.01 (19%)
New (17) Used (1) from $162.98
Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 30
Format: Cd-rom
Platform: Mac Os X Intel
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Operating System: Mac OS X
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.9 x 2.5
MPN: MSDICTATE
Model: MACSPEECH DICTATE
UPC: 806709380876
EAN: 0806709380876
ASIN: B0014KJ6EQ
Release Date: February 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 77
 HORRIBLE PROGRAM -- DO NOT BUY IT April 11, 2008
Busichio
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
I am a former TV reporter, with very clear diction, and the program did not understand my voice. Even when I spelled out words letter by letter, it would misinterpret what I said. The error rate was astounding. The text on the screen bore little resemblance to the words I spoke, even though I worked hard to "train" the program.
I returned the product in a NY second (for a full refund). However, all attempts to obtain information from the company about bugs or upgrades were futile. The reseller, BTW, told me there were many returns from dissatisfied customers.
File this under the category of "Never buy Version 1.0 of anything."
This product should never have been released. They must have displayed a souped-up, customized version at MacWorld, where it won Best of Show. The "off-the-rack" product, by comparison, was a dog.
I have never written a product review before, but I felt compelled to speak out this time.
 Don't be afraid.... April 19, 2008
J. S. Huff (Charlottesville, VA USA)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I bought MacSpeech Dictate today in spite of the mixed reviews. My experience is that installation was without difficulty, the training was quick and easy, and execution surpasses my expectations. This review is dictated using MacSpeech Dictate and going through the very brief training session. Again, expectations exceeded.
The question with any software is how much it will actually be used. Time will tell, but initial impressions are great period online support could be more robust but this will come with time. note small air indication --Note small error in dictation. -- preceding errors common to all voice recognition programs. Huge improvement over my experience with ViaVoice.
A Real Review March 28, 2008
David Illig (Maryland)
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
Macspeech Dictate with usb Headset /microphone
Of the five "reviews" posted to date, four are not reviews, as they were written by people who, for one reason or another, had never used MacSpeech Dictate. What kind of a "review" is that!? Installation problems are to be worked out with the manufacturer, and are not appropriate in a review because there are too many computer-specific variables involved in the installation process to offhandedly blame the manufacturer -- unless NOBODY is able to install the software.
I had no difficulty installing and setting up Dictate on a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz running Leopard.
My review is based on a month of use; I got a cross-grade from iListen.
Dictate is giving me phenomenal accuracy out of the box; better 97 percent (based on actual word counts). Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) for Windows gives me about 99 percent.
Dictate's shortcoming is that it lacks features--especially the ability to make corrections in a manner similar to that of DNS and the ability to learn from mistakes. According to MacSpeech, these features are coming as updates. I give Dictate five stars for accuracy and take away two stars for its incomplete feature set. When MacSppech adds the missing features I expect that Dictate will be five-star software.
So far, So good April 12, 2008
1L
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
So far, so good. Installation took approximately 10 minutes. I encountered no problems on my Intel MacBook. Out of curiosity, I set up a second profile, to see how the voice recognition software would work with my onboard microphone. Amazingly, it works with very good accuracy. I'm speaking this text into the computer through the onboard mic with no problem.
Notably missing, is new word voice training -- recognition to customize the vocabulary set. Hopefully, this will come with time.
I use this program primarily for law school, and thus far it has been pretty good at recognizing legal terms such as stare decisis as long as used in the context of constitutional law, or promissory estoppel in the context of contract law. Easement, covenant, horizontal privity, collateral estoppel, indemnity, subrogation, escrow, grantor, grantee, etc... all come through fine. Again, I find this impressive considering the fact that I am speaking these words into the onboard microphone.
I'm not sure why other posters here had such bad experiences. I've read several reviews on law blogs that give the program positive reviews, although other users also noted the absence of more refined features that some of the PC equivalent voice-recognition programs have.
Nonetheless, this is a tremendous addition to the various uses that my Mac laptop provides. One thing to add, I ordered this from Amazon and paid additional funds for second Day shipping day. With a weekend included, the estimated arrival date was six days away from order time. As a result, I canceled, and decided to purchase elsewhere.
Steep installation curve, but fairly accurate April 15, 2008
Christopher A. Bail (Cambridge, MA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Hello:
I nearly didn't order this program based on the reviews on this page. Luckily I braved the many installation issues and found the program to capture about 90-95% of my speech fairly well. I am pretty tech-savvy, and it took me about a half hour to get the program working well. I did not have any issues installing the program mentioned in the other reviews- my main obstacle was getting the microphone that came with the program to work within macspeech. I eventually realized that I had forgot to select the appropriate microphone from the user profile page that appears after installation.
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