Review by Scott Lloyd

I am dictating this review using MacSpeech Dictate. If I have to make a correction with my keyboard I will indicate the correction using brackets.

My wife knew I wanted this program so she bought [it] for me for Christmas. I had read many of the reviews and had decided I would wait until some of the bugs have [had] been worked out. So it was with some reticence that I loaded the program onto my computer Christmas day. From some of the reviews I thought it would blow my computer up. However, with some encouragement from my daughter I decided to install it. It was surprisingly easy. I did have two [to] download the patch from the MacSpeech website. But I was prompted to do so and everything went smoothly (I have a wireless Internet connection which made it easy).

It took me about 20 minutes to do the training. It went well. However, the first few times I tried to dictate it didn’t go well. At first I feared it was a complete waste of money. After working with it for a while thing[s] started [to] work better until finally it seemed to work perfectly. I did do a few of the training exercises over again, just to be on the safe side. As you can see it’s doing a pretty good job. Occasionally I use the recognition menu which allows you to verbally select from a list of options. This is especially good if there is a lot of background noise. I’m actually using it occasionally right now because I find it easier to dictate while I look at the screen. The manual tells you not to do that but for some reason for me it works better. I look at the screen while I type so it seems natural for me to look at the screen while I dictate.

So what initially seemed like a potential disaster turned out to be a lot of fun. I never let on to my wife that her gift initially terrorized me.

I don’t really understand those who bash the program. Maybe they type a lot better than I do. In the final analysis I give MacSpeech Dictate high marks. Naturally it makes mistakes, and the mistakes can be hard to find because the program never misspell[s] anything. But all things considered it truly is amazing.

[I]incidentally, there is a great manual in the help menu. It has everything I needed to know about the program, plus some that [I] haven’t gotten to yet but hope[d] to learn about soon (like using it to do commands in programs like Photoshop).

I dictated this review with only eight typos. That’s a lot better than if I had typed everything.