Dragon and Jaws: need urgent help!

Category: Geeks r Us

Post 1 by faithful angel (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Friday, 24-Dec-2010 16:01:43

OK, so Mom and I were watching TV and this advertisement for Dragon Naturally Speaking came on the TV. Without really thinking I said, "That sounds cool. I'd like to have that!" Well, they got it for me for Christmas. My question is is there a way to make Dragon work with jaws? I really need your help!

Post 2 by Twinklestar09 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Friday, 24-Dec-2010 19:34:34

There is a way to make both programs work together, but you need still another programs for that. There are two that I know of:
Jawbone, made by Next Generation Technologies, Inc., and
J-SAY PROFESSIONAL, made by T&T Consultancy Limited.
Jawbone is about $500-something, and J-Say is over $800. You might want to Google about Jawbone to see if it still is being made though, as I had looked up about these two programs on the Abeldata website and their last update for that product was on 2003. So I think the only program that might work with JAWS and Dragon might be only J-Say.

Post 3 by faithful angel (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 1:09:46

OK, I won't be doing that. It's going back. I'm not spending that kind of money. Forget it.:(

Post 4 by faithful angel (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 1:10:39

I'm sorry, but that's crazy to spend 500 dollars on something that my parents bought for like 100. No! Not happening!

Post 5 by Twinklestar09 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 4:23:14

Yeah; I know. I had gotten Dragon myself because I wanted to read from some Braille documents that I had in order to save them digitally. But I agree that that's a lot of extra money to spend just to make two programs work together. So, I gave it to my mom who has yet to set it up on her computer. *smile* There are other voice-input programs you can look into, some of which have a free trial so that you can see if it works before you buy it. I'm not sure how well or not they'd do with JAWS running in the background though, and I would think if you're going to try them that you should set JAWS, not to start up automatically with these programs. You can find a list of such programs here:
http://www.abledata.com/abledata.cfm?pageid=19327&top=10608&deep=2&trail=22,13134,13179
I think Keystone Discrete sounds good because it has both speech recognition and a screenreader, so it might talk you thru using it. You should read more into that though and maybe ask the company about it to make sure though. I did buy the program called Abasoft Talking Desktop but have not been able to make it work. So, I'm personally considering using TALKITTYPEIT. I've never tried it, but I think it has a trial thing so I might try that first sometime.

Post 6 by Twinklestar09 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 4:38:04

*sigh* OK; I tried looking up more info about Keystone Discrete, but can't find a website on it. Maybe try contacting the company info that is given for that product on the Abledata site to see if you can reach them like that.

Post 7 by faithful angel (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 5:06:58

Thank you. You've been very helpful. Like I say, my parents got this for me as a Christmas gift, so I hate to tell them that they need to pay more money for me to use it, but I also feel bad about telling them to send it back. Anyways, thanks for your help.

Post 8 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 9:12:42

I believe it would work with system access, so you could use satogo with it. I also have it installed but haven't used it yet. Hold on to that copy. I might be able to help you.

Post 9 by faithful angel (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 12:19:58

OK, I will for a little while.

Post 10 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Saturday, 25-Dec-2010 21:20:20

I've found the voice recognition software built in to Windows 7 works quite well once set up. They want you to read several phraises, but just reading the inicial set-up will work for most people. There is a podcast on this utility from the serotalk podcasts. I don't have the link hand, but Google can find it for you. Sorry you spent money on something that won't work for you, I just hope you can get your money back. Best of luck.

Post 11 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Monday, 27-Dec-2010 13:32:46

Also tell your parents if they get you an iPod Touch there is a Dragon Dictates app for free from the app store.
I have started trying to use it. It does work quite well to be honest. My major problem is the proverbial stage fright: I push that damned button and freeze up ... but with some practice perhaps that will improve. You can edit text on the fly using the onscreen keyboard, so when it messes up you can fix it.
Anyway, just a thought.

Post 12 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Tuesday, 28-Dec-2010 10:29:57

The voice recognition built in to windows 7 is quite excellent. Also, the dragon app for the iThing is certainly worth the nothing you pay for it. I use it for dictating text messages. And then there's NVDA for a free screen reader. Wow, finally! an accessible windows computer.

Post 13 by faithful angel (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 30-Dec-2010 19:50:49

Thanks guys.:) I'll just ask Mom and Dad to send it back.:) I appreciate your help.