I use speech recognition extensively, for hours a day.
I own both Ilisten for OSX, and Dragon 8.1, soon going to 9.0 for Windows XP. I use a MacBook Pro at the office, and a Mac Pro at home. I have tried to run Dragon in Parallels, but have not been successful. The problem is the microphone in Parallels, not the software. I use the Philips SpeechMike Pro for Dragon, and the Plantronics .85 for Ilisten in OSX.
I routinely run Dragon 8.1 in Boot Camp using Windows XP with the Philips mike, indeed, it is now my favorite platform since my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro are the fastest Windows machines at my disposal. Dragon is the only residual application I use on a Windows machine, and I would love to get reliable industrial strength voice recognition over to the Mac platform. I would offer the following observatioins:
1. My preference for Dragon over Ilisten is not based on the software, but on the microphone. I use voice recognition for hours a day as a busy internal medicine doctor, and I just can't use the boom microphone/headset required for Ilisten for extended periods of time. I find the workflow with Dragon a little superior to Ilisten, but accuracy seems quite good with both. The Philips mike is not supported on the Mac in OSX, something to do with the USB port configuration, I think. I would likely switch to Ilisten on OSX if MacSpeech came up with a hand mike as good as Phiips, since all of my other applications run in OSX either natively or via the OSX citrix client. This includes the GE Centricity Office EMR and the Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager hospital information system and our organization's Groupwise email and PIM. From a clinical perspective, we are totally paperless with no paper charts in either our office or in the hospital. So the speech recognition software is at the core all of our clinical activities.
2. I had no diffuculty installing the Philips software in Parallels, but the function keys that are required to support the Phiips mike do not work. To be more specific, the Philips microphone generates function keys to transmit commands to the software, and Parallels just can't get these comands, no matter what I do. I left a message here on the forum, but never got a satisfoctory response that worked to capture the function keys generated by the Philips microphone control buttons in Windows XP in parallels, or to get the microphone programed for other keys. I suspect this can be made to work, but I gave up since Boot Camp supports it so well. But I would prefer Paralles over Boot Camp if it could be made to work.
3. I have not tried to use Ilisten in Citrix on OSX, and this might be problematic, I just do not know. I have talked to the tech support people at MacSpeech, and they were not very helpful, nor had they apparently even tried to do this. I think they are missing a huge opportunity, and still have that smug Mac only arrogance, not recognizing that there are a huge number of people like myself who are compelled for business needs to remain partially in the Windows world, but desiring to maximize the OSX esperience. Obviously, Paralles understands this.
3. I would love to use MacSpeech's product since I am a confirmed Mac user, but I just cannot get over the microphone issues. Macspeech is kind of the Avis against Hertz vendor, and they are almost there. Their software is fine. But they have not tackled the microphone issues, leaving it to the hardware vendors, who have very little economic motivation to solve the problems for the modest number of Mac business transcription users. I think that the boom mic is adequate for the casual user, probably for the student user, but the workflow enhancements avialable with function buttons on a hand microphone will in my judgment lead the serious transcriber away from MacSpeech and Ilsten until they solve this, no matter how good their software.
4. Getting the Philips microphone with Dragon to work on Windows XP in Parallels, complete with microphone function keys would be a great accomplishment. I hope that someone has done it or will do it soon, and that they share that knowledge with the rest of us.
Hope that this has been helpful.....
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