I must have bought every version of Dragon Naturally Speaking since about the 6th version, and ultimately I always give up voice dictation and stick to my Dictaphone and secretaries. My latest effort is with Dragon Version 11 and so far, I got off to a very slow start, once again, with training the system.

It frustrates me no end that this is one aspect of computing that really has not improved considerably over the last decade and that even after hours of dictation, the style of dictation is not usually suitable unless you are writing a long article style document or a general memo for staff. It is way too difficult to attend to difficult contracts this way, for example, with small, short paragraphs and sub-paragraphs where every 5 or 6 words you are forced to go back and correct something, whereas you will never have that problem with a good secretary.