Speech-To-Text software needed

I know there's a bazillion apps that will take a text document and turn it into speech, but what about the other way? I know about Dragon-Naturally Speaking, but are there any free apps like Dragon? Or at least inexpensive apps?

 

XP (and presumably later) and MS Office 2003 (and probably later) (combined) have a speech recognition engine already. In Word, for example, go to Tools>Speech. You will probably be asked to install.

 

But the OP specifically said he doesn't want to turn text into speech.
Yes that capability is already built into Windows. I hit some key combination by accident every once in a while, with my left hand, and get my PC talking to me. OOOOOOh that's eerie!

He wants to be able to talk into a microphone, connected to his computer and have it typed out on the screen, in a document.
I know about the Dragon program and I set it up for an old gentleman years ago, but he didn't like it and went back to one-finger typing. You still have to be able to type to correct its errors.

The guys who demonstrate that speech to text software at the computer shows have hundreds or maybe thousands of hours experience with it. I'm told the learning curve for a newbie can be really long, and frustrating.
And you must be able to speak perfect English without any accent and with perfect enunciation. Speak with a heavy accent or slurrrrrrr your words and it will screw up beyond recognition.:confused
Don't try to use it when you have a bad head cold.:-D:-D:-D
Just a word of caution.

Good Luck,
the Shadow :cool

 

As far back as Win 98SE I used to use ViaVoice, and training it to recognise your manner of speaking entailed reading a set text for no more than 15 minutes, after which it would easily achieve 95% plus accuracy. It continued to learn through your corrections, and after a short while became nearly word perfect.

Vista and Win 7 have speech recognition built in. Maybe someone who uses it can comment.

 

Yep. Which is why I pointed him to a Windows/Office speech recognition program. Here's an excerpt from Word 2003 about it:

I use Dragon Naturally Speaking every day at work. It has a high recognition accuracy (even when I'm not speaking too clearly - like at the end of a long day), and you can train it by reading for about 5 minutes.

 

When Office 2007 and Vista came along MS built that capability into the OS and removed it from Office, so every Vista/Win 7 user has it now, not just Office users, but it means XP users with Office 2007 or later don't have it at all, which is a bit rough I think. Since retiring I no longer have a need for it, which is a pity because I never tired of watching it type my dictation at speed with hardly a single error - and on a P3 machine at that!

 

Vista and 7 have speech-to-text built in? WOW!! I didn't know that! I'm running Windows 7 x64 Home Premium, so I'll have to look in to this a bit more. I'm assuming then that I can activate it to work with any word processing program like OpenOffice or the free MS Office compatible program from Kingsoft or even get it to work with Notepad or WordPad.... thanks for the info everyone!!! I'll do more research and testing and I'll update this thread as I make progress....

 

Wait for W9! http://msftkitchen.com/2010/04/ms-employee-leaks-plans-windows-9-to-be-voice-controlled-only.html

I went raw in the throat trying out Vista's 'speech'. I hope it works better.

 

I did some quick Googling and reading, and it does appear that the Win7 speech recognition will work with any word processor, not only MS products. Here's a few links that I found especially informative for those of that are interested:

http://www.windows7news.com/2009/09/18/how-to-use-speech-recognition-with-windows-7/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2826694/using_windows_7_speech_recognition.html?cat=15

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-change-windows-7s-speech-recognition-settin.html

 

Look up.