Monday evening was quite an exciting event for me because I was able to help a friend upgrade to Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11. In addition, I was able to assist in managing the users as well as their different sources from the version 10 prior to migrating to version 11. The entire event took approximately 5 hours to complete over a dinner at a local pub. In short, three basic things took place.
The first was consolidation of users under the manage user setting. For whatever reason, multiple users have been generated and there was no specific reason other than that one appeared to be solely generated for integration with Sony’s ICD-MX 20 voice recorder. In order to consolidate these down the two extraneous user profiles were deleted. Then the acoustic and language optimizer was run for the first time according to my friend. The solution was quite simple because all that needed to take place was ensuring that the correct microphone was being utilized at the same time the dictation was taking place. On a different note, my friend had also purchased and Andrea electronics USB soundcard for Mike input. The test between using the microphone with and without this device showed that the Andrea electronics USB soundcard did make a difference.
The second item was migrating the software over to Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11 preferred addition. The transfer was relatively seamless. My friend did not have a 64-bit operating system, so the patch was not required at this time in order to enable the program to function correctly. The only drawback to the upgrade was that it took a good hour for the program to install and then migrate his existing user file up to the version 11 status. Fortunately, this activity was done over the dinnertime, so not much effort was lost because we needed to eat anyway and have a lot to catch up on. Interestingly enough, my friend and I shared a similar interest on investing as well as speech recognition software, so the purpose of this site melded well between the two of us. In future posts, I will hopefully be able to comment on the success of using this tool to help out my investing endeavors.
The third item was attempting to reintegrate the Sony ICD-MX 20 voice recorder. Unfortunately, the addition of this source to the user file did not correctly import or implement based on the step-by-step process divided in the instructions. Confusing as this was, the simple fact that we were both very tired at this point in the evening probably was one of the major components to why we were unable to complete this task. In short order, I’m positive that we can figure out a method to make this work. However, when that exact time becomes available is not clear as both of us have busy schedules between work and life.
To conclude the evening, I received for Starbucks gift cards at a value of about $25 apiece. These were completely unexpected as the activity was simply in support of someone else who likes to use the software and sharing of information so that we can both continue to use it as well as advocate to other people for why it is useful. Either way, the gesture was greatly appreciated as it was nice to provide my family later in the evening since I missed basically all of Friday evening helping out with this activity. In short, it was a good time with a trusted friend having fun with a very cool piece of software.
Texts below from my friend:
Thanks again for your help. It is greatly appreciated.
Dictated by Dragon iPhone
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This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T
I can’t wait to start using what I’ve learned from you. Also I was able to use it on my last flight. That’s awesome. Thanks again.
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This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T
Post created using Dragon Naturally Speaking V10.0 speech recognition software with a Plantronics USB headset. The post is currently the raw dictation and has not yet been processed for corrections.
