[WinMac] Using PC Speech Software on a Mac-Question (LONG)

Joe Dobrowolski(Joe[at]AMandA.com)
Fri, 21 Aug 1998 09:10:06 -0700

My Question:
Cheap continuous speech recognition for dicatation on the Mac, is it
possible???

My story:
My goal is to use continuous speech dictation on my mac.Currently, only
Dragon Systems makes a Mac dictation program, which they will be
discontinuing, and which is only discrete speech dictation and still sells
for $150-200. I am a bit skeptical about using discrete speech, it only
gets up to 50 wpm and seems very frustrating to use. MacSpeech, Inc.
(macspeech.com) is starting to build a continuous speech dictation product,
but they are still looking for investors, so a release date seems far off
in the future. In the PC world, there are tons of continuous and discrete
programs available, cheap too.

I have a G3/266 and a copy of Virtual PC. I went out and bought Dragon Type
and Speak, thinking my G3 would be powerful enough. (I figured that I would
meet the 133mhz PC speed requirements-which I did) Well, after gettting
everything installed and set up, I was unpleasantly greeted with an error
message within VPC/Windows as the software told me that I did not meet the
sound requirements. VPC does not emulate 16 bit sound! I also found out
that Softwindows does not emulate 16bit sound either. So neither software
emulators are able to emulate 16bit sound, so I cannot use PC speech
software this way. VPC says 16bit sound emulation is way off, while
Softwindows thinks it is in the near future.

The next option is to move up to a PC compatibility Card. I looked at
OrangeMicro first, they have two products right now, the 620 and 550. The
620 card is as low at $399, but it does not do full 16bit sound and the
people at OrangeMicro say that it cannot be used with PC dictation
software. Maybe someone here can contradict that information. Their other
product, the 550, starts at $799, it is an awesome card, including 200Mhz,
upgradable to 300Mhz, 32-128mb ram, MMX and full 16bit sound and more.
Then I checked other cards. I could not find any information about any
older OrangeMicro cards and their 16bit sound compatility. This seems like
a good option, since I might be able to find a good deal on a older card
that provides what I need. As I looked for older cards, I ran into the
Apple DOS card, the most recent, but discontinued 166mhz version. It sells
for $359 -$399 at places like Shreve Systems and MacBase. This card only
comes with 16mb of ram and I would need to replace that 32mb chip with at
least a 32mb chip to run windows and the speech software. That brings the
total to $450. So far this Apple card is my cheapest option for running PC
dictation software. I have not seen any used Apple PC Cards, too bad.

This is getting expensive. PC owners can get continuous speech recognition
for $50, Mac users need to spend $50 plus the cost of a PC card ($350-1200)
and get extra PC ram ($50-100). Ouch!

More Questions:
What are my options other than forking out $450 or waiting for a company to
make the continuous speech dictation software for Mac?
Does anyone have any specs/info on the older OrangeMicro cards?
Does anyone know what prices used OrangeMicro cards are selling at and
where to get them?
Anyone seen a good place to find used apple PC cards? What Price?
What other PC cards are out there that I have not considered?
Is anyone using Continuous speech dictation software on their Mac? How?
Is anyone using Discrete speech dictation on their Mac? How bad is it?
(Why didn't Apple, with all of it's speech research, get a Mac version
built!?)

I will summarize any info that I get,
-Joe

-------------------------------
Joe Dobrowolski, Systems Administrator
Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc.
-------------------------------

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 09:14:21 PDT