If you have a desktop computer, you’re not ready to dictate until you get a headset with a microphone. You know you need a microphone to dictate to your computer, right? If you have a laptop, it has a microphone built into it. There are no settings for it and it is used only for text entry, not for controlling programs or doing anything special. Last year Microsoft added a second speech recognition engine to Windows 10. There’s a reason you didn’t know it was there. You can still find it in Windows 10 If you do a search for “windows speech recognition.” It’s clumsy to set up and not very accurate. It has languished ever since, appearing virtually unchanged in all the versions of Windows released since then. Microsoft first built speech recognition into Windows more than 10 years ago, when Vista was released.
(The previous version, Dragon 13, is still available, but it’s not as effective and seems to have some issues with Windows 10.) The current version, Dragon Professional Individual 15, is top notch. One fundamental truth has not changed: If you are serious about dictating on a computer, there is no alternative to the Dragon Naturally Speaking products. They’re still not great but you might want to give them a try if you haven’t talked to your computer in a while. Microsoft has quietly improved the speech recognition features in Windows 10 and in the Office programs.
