Trying out Full Dictation with Dragon Anywhere

After hearing a lot about Dragon from the podcast Mac Power Users, I figured I would give it a shot for its one-week trial you can get on iOS. Overall, I really like it. Approximately 95% of this article you are reading was done entirely in Dragon anywhere

The review in Dragon Anywhere being created

What is Dragon?

Dragon is a brand of software that is been around for over 20 years providing audio dictation for operating systems.The main use of this software is to allow a user to interact with the computer using the voice. This tech comes from a company called Nuance, who has been around for over 20 years developing this technology.

What makes different from what’s built in?

Using Dragon anywhere versus using the integrated dictation on the iPhone or iPad, is that you have no time limits when doing dictation. If you are using the standard iOS dictation, it will only listen to you for two minutes at a time and afterwards it will stop listening to you. While the integrated one is very functional, it does not have some decent power user features that the Dragon software is capable of doing.

For example, the IOS dictation only allows you to type out a single sentence etc. at a time. When using Dragon, you’re able to use certain keywords to move all around the words that you are typing. For example, I can use the phrase “New Paragraph” which will start the new paragraph from the moment I tell it to. You can also tell the software to select previous words that you have typed and then highlighted, allow you to change the word, bold it, or other functions.

Note: trying to do this portion was a little bit of a headache, as by saying these keywords the software was actually doing it. I did have to type this portion of the software would not try to do what I am describing. I will have to look into it there are ways to turn off the keywords when typing with stuff that has the keywords in it.

This welcome video does a good job of showing how it works.

Sometimes, it can be nice to get ideas out of your head without having to worry about typing. At least for me, I find sometimes I’m able to think faster than I’m able to type and the voice software is able to keep up with my speech, and the more that I’m using it, it seems to be getting better and better understanding my particular dialect, be able to work faster at getting the words correct each time, etc.

What are the cons?

While this is also a feature of the dictation for the iPhone, iPad, android devices, you still require Internet connection and I will be able to utilize the software. Be frustrating if running area without any kind of Internet connection, because if you are software. Again, this is also a feature of the dictation integrated into other smart phones and devices but it is so frustrating.

Software that you are using only be used in the Dragon Anywhere itself. Integrated dictation is available in every single program, while Dragon must be used in the software is packaged in. I understand this is likely a limitation of the operating system itself on IOS (I didn’t use it on android, so I can’t speak in regards to whether or not it can be used everywhere on android) on the plus side, the app itself is pretty useful in being able to share whatever text you have generated from that point into any application using the share share functionality via IOS so whatever work you complete, once you’re done you can move it into whatever program you want to.

The functionality you get, comes at a rather large price. Dragon anywhere costs $15 a month to get a monthly subscription for $149 a year pay for an annual subscription which makes it essentially that you get “two months free” to quote one user about it

“it’s way too expensive but I use it every day”

In my opinion, if this is software that you will use every single day, it may be worthwhile to pay the price for doing so. I am still in my trial. Actually on my second day, so I have some time to decide whether or not I’m going to fully invest in the software particularly for working on writing, editing, and publishing articles for my blog.