Ready to try voice recognition software again?

From David Pogue’s weekly Email:

Last March, in this column, I described my fondness for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the dictation software for Windows that lets me “write” at 120 words per minute. You wear a headset microphone, you speak normally (except that you speak the punctuation), and NatSpeak pumps the words into whatever program is frontmost.

Last week, the company (ScanSoft) unveiled its new version 8. The shocking twist: the best feature is improved accuracy. That’s it. Not bells, not whistles, just doing what it’s supposed to do, only 25 percent better. (The company calls it 99 percent accurate, but that’s hard for me to measure; I’ll generally dictate an entire column without a single mis-transcription. For that document, it’s 100 percent.)