The Dragon NaturallySpeaking Guide: Speech Recognition Made Fast and Simple

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Summary: A must have for optimum productivity
Review: Dave Newman's book is essential for any speech recognition user regardless of the amount of experience they may have. He teaches you techniques that help you improve your accuracy and speed. He also gives you pointers on how to optimize your software and hardware for maximum accuracy and speed. Dave provides a complete step by step guide on all the features of Dragon 4.0 with greater detail. He includes the new features such as surfing the web by voice. This book is a must have for making your speech recognition program usable in terms of reducing frustration and improving the overall performance of your software with his instructions which Dragon doesn't cover in their manual.

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Summary: For Authors not Typists
Review: I used Dragon to first-draft Writing Nonfiction: Turning Thoughts Into Books. I was so impressed with the system, I included a chapter on using speech recognition to dictate a how-to book. Then I found Dan Newman's book. I recognized a number of things I had learned and found a whole lot more. Newman made the Dragon even more fun.

If you write a lot and are not an accurate, rapid typist, get speech recognition software. If you are fast and correct, keep on keyboarding. Dragon is good but you will have to make corrections. If you already make mistakes, it does not matter if you talk or type.

Dan Newman takes you step-by-step through using Dragon Naturally Speaking. (For coverage, click on Table of Contents in the left-hand column of this page.) He even includes trouble-shooting tips and resources.

Dan Newman is a great writer, gifted computer expert and a dedicated teacher.

As the author of 113 books (including revisions and foreign-language editions) and over 500 magazine articles, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has to write a lot. [e-mail].

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Summary: If you use Dragon products you need this book.
Review: Mr. Newman's book is outstanding-the best I've come across on speech recognition training. From the day I started reading the book I gained invaluable information which I have been using for training college students on this important technology. This book is a must have if you use or train people on voice recognition technology.

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Summary: Simply terrific!...
Review: This book not only covers Dragon NaturallySpeaking software but also offers several tips and examples on efficient speech recognition. The material is presented in such interesting fashion that makes this book fun to read. If you own Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, this book is a must to have.

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Summary: Simply terrific!...
Review: This is a really helpful book. I would prefer to read and Dan Newman's book than all the technical stuff in the Dragon manual, because it is so much more user-friendly. I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking since it came out in 1995. There is so much to know, and so much you can forget!! By reading this book, I am remembering some very useful tips, and learning some new ones. I would recommend this book to anyone using NaturallySpeaking.

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Summary: Great help for both new and old Dragon NS Users
Review: This is a really helpful book. I would prefer to read and Dan Newman's book than all the technical stuff in the Dragon manual, because it is so much more user-friendly. I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking since it came out in 1995. There is so much to know, and so much you can forget!! By reading this book, I am remembering some very useful tips, and learning some new ones. I would recommend this book to anyone using NaturallySpeaking.

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Summary: Great for beginners and even great tips for longtime users
Review: To tell you the truth, I wish I had had this book a long time ago. It's really good for a beginner, but I'm also getting some tips on writing macros. (I have been using NaturallySpeaking since 1997, and I have been using the Professional Edition for almost a year, but writing macros to streamline tasks has been confusing. For example, I just wrote a macro that says "erase that" as an option to their "scratch that." It's just easier for me to say. It also uses my new knowledge of "heardword."

The book also gave a great idea about doing a template form using NaturallySpeaking.

It also gives information that I cannot find in any of my Dragon NaturallySpeaking user guides. For example, I have always had a hard time with words that have an apostrophe. I would want to say "Mary's book," and I would get "Marys book." And so I would end up doing lots of corrections. I never found any way to correct this in the Dragon documentation. If it's on the online documentation, it's too confusing to wade through to find it. On this topic it says that you can say "apostrophe ess," whenever you have an apostrophe, and it works!!! It's getting rid of some of my pet peeves in dictation.

This book is very well-organized.

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Summary: Finally!
Review: Why didn't someone write this book years ago? Dan Newman distills the complexities into concise explanations of perfect clarity. Dragonites need this book. All the problems I've been struggling with for years were solved in a few hours of reading. Talk about clear, easy organization. Thank you, Dan Newman!