Dragon Naturally Speaking confict with Windows XP

Hi Guys,
Anybody out there thinking of buying a voice recognition program to avoid all that typing stuff might find this tip useful.
I bought Dragon...Preferred V7, so I could dictate directly into Word and Excel, but after installation I found problems with my OS (Windows XP Home) as I couldn't get Start/Turn Off/Stand By or Turn Off or Restart to work unless I went through the routine a second time. There was also problems with Dragon itself, in that it kept reporting 'invalid vocabulary', hanging, then crashing my system.
After lots of back and forth with Dragon Tech Support, they admit they knew of these probs since June 2002, but didn't bother making it public. Needless to say, it's not mentioned in their Manual either.
Their suggested 'cure' is a heavy Registry editing session, which 'might' resolve the problem, but not guaranteed to do so.
Conclusion: save yourself £117 and learn to type! Oh yes, if you do buy it, make sure you use a credit card; that way you can deduct it from what you owe the credit card company under S.75 Consumer Credit Act 1974, as it fails the tests under The Sale of Goods Act 1979(as amended).
Hope this save somebody as much grief as I've had.
Cheers, Omigosh.

 

as for a pretty good voice recognition program --I've purchased MS office2003 and this programs voice recognition works great, easy and fast.
In 15 min your up and running easy to train and sounds great

 

Hi, and thanks for tip. I have MS Office 2003 SBE, and am still trying to get to tems with its 'basic' functions--so much so that I hadn't even noticed it had a voice recognition prog built in! Since your reply, I've looked in my copy of Office 2003 by Bott & Leonhard (Que Books), and see how to use it spelled out on p112;15 mins training, like you said. Can't wait to try it.
Thanks again.
Omigosh. http://www.majorgeeks.com/vb/images/icons/icon7.gif

 

Microsoft have started to include their own voice recognisition, which "thoughtfully" conflicts with other voice recognisition applications on the market . It also affects/interferes with other 3rd party programs(Probably because it adds a hook into the application to convert the voice into WM_KEY events, which are then posted to the application).

If not using the Microsoft Speech Recognisition, then it is recommended to turn off the support.

OFFXP: What Is CTFMON and What Does It Do?
Programs May Start, Quit, Lose, and Gain Focus Randomly (Describes how to turn off text services in WinXP)

If planning to use Microsoft Voice Recognisition:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=278927
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=306901
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=306537
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=306902
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=295947
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=306899
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=283159