Review by J. Nelson

I tried this product more out of curiosity than out of a desire to anything in particular with it (I’m not a writer, I’m not continuously typing long documents, and even if I were, my typing is pretty good). I was fairly impressed at first, just because I’ve never used speech recognition software before, and it was a delight to see what I was saying (mostly) appearing on screen.

After playing around with it for a while, however, I don’t think it would be the kind of software I would want to use regularly to compose documents. When I’m typing, I watch the screen, and correct nearly all of my errors as they appear. It’s absolute torture for me to go through and proof my work after I’ve typed it. Using speech recognition software regularly would force me to do so, since I’m less likely to catch the errors in real time. Now, proofreading is a good skill to have, and a good habit to be in, but I hate doing it, so anything that would make me have to do so (like a critical boss, or speech recognition software) is something I’m not eager to embrace (I don’t actually make a habit of embracing any of my bosses, but that’s neither here nor there).

So, if you’re lazy like me, you’ll be torn between the convenience of keeping your hands in your pockets (or busy ferrying junk food from the bag to your face) while you work, and the inconvenience of proofing your work after it’s dictated. For the diligent, I guess this software would let them dictate documents while doing chin-ups, or something, but that’s a lifestyle (diligence, physical fitness) that I don’t know much about and can’t provide a lot of useful feedback on.