Buy Speak & See (PC DVD)Speak & See (PC DVD) Product Description:
Product Description
The Speak See Suite is powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the award-winning speech recognition software. It can provide help to those with upper body mobility and literacy problems (such as dyslexia), or those unable to type very well....
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
By Susan Belcher
This pack contains: - Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred version 10 - Speak and See Suite, which contains: - Speak and See - text reader - Screen Ruler - sets a magnified light bar across the screen (darkening the rest) - Lightning Express - magnifies a given area of text - Microphone headsetThe Dragon Naturally Speaking package is something that I've used quite a lot. I have the standard edition of version 10 (my first was Version 6 which I still use on my laptop). So what's the difference I hear you ask: Preference seems to pick up on the pronunciation of words easier than standard seemed to.You still have to train the Dragon, and this takes time (and can be a little embarrassing if there are other people present), but it is well worth it. The training centre only has a limited number of training documents, from Alice in Wonderland to Kennedy's inauguration speech to memos and reports. Unfortunately there isn't enough choice in the training documents to keep me interested in training - in fact the version 6 I have has nearly double the training documents. This may be something that Nuance can do something about, perhaps with downloadable training documents. One side effect of performing the training is you become better at reading out loud.Dragon can be useful whether or not you have any reading or writing disability. It will make mistakes so keeping an eye on the screen is always useful. Correcting errors will teach the Dragon and these errors should occur less frequently. Vocal commands are easy to learn and to remember, and there is always the tip of the day to remind you of a command.If there is any problem with the Dragon then use the contact information - from my own experience I can tell you that they usually get back to you within 48 hours (normally within 24 hours).The Speak and See text reader is a great idea. Pronunciation of some words needs work and the voices could be a little more engaging. However, if you have typed something and you want to hear it back then this does the job. Also if there is a document (email, text, etc) that you need to read then this gives you an alternative to staring at the display.The Screen Ruler is a dream for me. I suffer from migraines and a degree of visual impairment as an attack builds up and dies down. A bright screen can cause these symptoms to become more debilitating. The Screen Ruler allows you to have a reduced area of the screen which is bright and dims the rest of the screen, while magnifying the text, so taking stress away from the eyes.Lightning Express was quite a shock when I first switched it on. You can vary the print size from normal to +6. I found that +2 was more than sufficient when my eyes were tired. You can also change the colour of the screen from white background to black background with white text. This also reduces stress on the eyes and the colour change can make it easier to read for certain types of dyslexia.The headset is the only real let down. Because it has been crammed into such a small package it seems very tight on the head, and so, is extremely uncomfortable to use. So far no amount of stretching has altered the tension on the head.All in all, this is an outstanding package of software. I envisage myself using the Dragon most (as I do now), followed by the Speak and See and Screen Ruler.Oh, one last thing, this review was created using the Dragon naturally speaking programme.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
By Mark R. Bannister
I must admit that I didn't quite know what to expect from this product. Software that could take commands or dictation from the sound of your own voice, that could read out sentences on screen as well as aid in language learning.Installation was easy, you have two DVDs to install. One installs Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which the other products rely on. The second DVD installs Nuance Speak & See and other miscellany. My only quibble with the installation was that, even though I wanted it to install on my D: drive, it still required over 1Gb on my C: drive. This led to me having to perform a major clean-up activity on my PC before I could install it. This could certainly be improved.However, once installed I was immediately impressed by the basic offerings. After listening to my voice in the supplied headset with microphone, the Dragon software was very good at understanding what I said. I tried writing a letter, and was impressed by the high degree of accuracy, even when I was talking at speed. Ok, it's not perfect, no voice recognition software can be perfect, and it does require clear dictation. You will also need to use a mouse for some jobs, like editing and punctuation. However, it can be trained to learn from recognition mistakes, which is an essential and useful feature. Dragon is also very good at accepting commands. "Search the web for things to do in London" you say - your favourite browser opens up, it takes you to a search engine and types "things to do in London" for you in the search field. Dragon can also be trained to accept new commands, which gives it great potential to be extended to suit most needs.With Speak & See, documents and web pages can be read out to you. The default British English voice is very clear and again I was extremely impressed by this. If some words are mispronounced, you can also train the software to say that word differently, which is also very useful. There are several other voices provided, including other European and Asian accents, but I was less impressed by these. They sounded very disjointed, as if they were thrown together at the last minute days before the product hit the shelves.Speak & See generally fails to cope well in dual monitor set-ups. If your PC has two monitors, you will find some of the features don't work properly. Search bars appear across the join in the monitors making them difficult to use, and the ScreenRuler, which is designed to enlarge characters in a moveable rectangle that can be shifted up and down the screen won't work on the second display. This could be improved.I was also less than impressed by the features that were supposed to aid language learning. I expected Speak & See to be able to read out a French webpage for me, for example, in a French accent, and provide some kind of translation facility. This is not how it works. It will attempt to read the French with a very British accent, pronouncing it totally wrong. A built-in dictionary is supposed to help you translate foreign words quickly, but I couldn't get this feature to work smoothly at all.I can see this product being useful for those who need the features because they find it difficult to use a keyboard, as the dictation and voice control software is outstanding and highly adaptable. For other purposes perhaps not. It's no more than a gimmick really, and an expensive toy at that. Don't buy this product if you need help with language learning, it will be an expensive mistake.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
By M. Price
Without shadow of a doubt, this piece of software is completely and utterly useless!The headset that comes bundled with the software is in fact the best thing in the box as what's loaded to the disc is nothing more than a complete waste of time, not only installing the software but that of trying to use it! I figured this would help an older member of my family and I can certainly say that I'm glad I tested the first, all that this would have resulted in is question upon question of how to use the software properly from this member of family.Personally I feel that this kind of product should be extremely intuitive, as the kind of person this software is designed for is either less able or older than the average computer user, seeing as it's left me somewhat flummoxed, I most certainly would not recommend this to anybody attempting to use it for the purposes that the software describes it is capable of doing.
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