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Hello Helen
As a speech recognition system The “Microsoft speech recognition” isn’t too bad , in fact I am using it at the moment to dictate this e-mail. I prefer to use dragon naturally
speaking however I can’t have Dragon installed on my university supplied computer for a lot of other reasons that I won’t go into just now. If you do go for the Microsoft speech recognition program I would definitely recommend you get a quality USB headset
to give the Microsoft speech recognition a better chance of understanding the speaker and there are a number of people on this list that can recommend quality headsets, but that’s possibly another question.
As to the processor it is a bit slow Nuance (Dragon) recommend a minimum 2.2 Ghz processor but I have run the program on slower systems. The biggest problem on the system
described is the memory or lack of it 4 Gb isn’t (in my opinion) really enough to run dragon you really want 8 GB (I have 12GB RAM on my home system). On a system with a 64bit operating system Nuance (Dragon) recommend 4GB just for Dragon. Generally when
software suppliers state that amount of memory they want, that’s what it wants for that program. When the computer hasn’t got enough it virtual memory on the hard drive to make up the difference. However accessing virtual memory isn’t as fast as standard RAM
which is really important to programs such as Dragon.
Below is a breakdown of the memory needed by different software packages and links to the respective sites
Software System Requirements
Windows 10
Processor 1 GHz processor or faster
Memory 1 GB RAM for 32-bit;
2 GB for 64-bit
Hard Disk Space Up to 20 GB available hard disk space
Video card 800 x 600 screen resolution or higher DirectX® 9 graphics processor with WDDM driver
Connectivity Internet access (fees may apply)
Other Requirements Microsoft account required for some features. Watching DVDs requires separate playback software
Additional You must accept the License Terms
Activation required Single license • 32 & 64-bits on USB 3.0 included
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msuk/en_GB/pdp/Windows-10-Home/productID.320418600
Windows 8.1
Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or
2 GB (64-bit)
Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-8/system-requirements
Office 2016
Processor 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster x86-bit or x64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set
Memory
2 GB RAM
Hard disk 3.0 GB available disk space
Display 1280 x 800 screen resolution
Graphics Graphics hardware acceleration requires a DirectX 10 graphics card.
https://products.office.com/en-us/office-system-requirements
Dragon Naturally Speaking 13
• RAM Recommend minimum 2 GB for 32-bit and
4 GB for 64-bit Windows 7, 8 and 8.1
• CPU Recommend 2.2 GHz Intel® dual core or equivalent AMD processor. Faster processors yield faster performance.
• Processor Cache We recommend 2 MB L2 cache. (Minimum: 512 KB)
• Free hard disk space 4GB. If installing from a download: three times as much space is initially needed (after the download is unpacked and installation
completes, temporary files can be removed from the system)
·
System Requirements: The install process checks that your system meets the minimum requirements; if they are not met, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will not be installed.
ClaroRead Plus for PC
• Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 SP1, Windows Vista SP2
•
1GB RAM
• 500MB hard disk space plus 150-500MB for each voice.
• Microsoft Word 2007, Word 2010, Word 2013, or Word 2016
• Sound card supporting text-to-speech.
• Scanner supporting TWAIN or WIA (Plus and Pro).
https://www.clarosoftware.com/claroread
Global autocorrect
• Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 or later
• 1.5 GHz processor
•
2GB RAM
http://www.lexable.com/download/
Regards
Graham Rice
Assistive IT Technician
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From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Helen Stocker
Sent: 11 November 2015 12:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Alternatives to Dragon
Dear All
I just wondered what the alternatives to Dragon would be.
I have a student who already bought a laptop (they were assessed only a month ago) and has been told that it's not fast enough to run all of the software they would need.
I have attached a copy of the details of their laptop and software requirements
They'd need to pay the £200 towards the cost of a new laptop, but the student does not have this and neither do we. Therefore, we trying to work out ways around it.
Thank you,
Helen.
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