I want to get a new computer. Not just any computer, but the ultimate voice-recognition machine. My current one is noisy and not is fast as I would like, and the Dragon NaturallySpeaking accuracy isn't nearly what I need it to be. I realize that part of the problem probably lies with me, but I want to have the machinery perfect so I can work on my part. I know that there have been a bunch of posts like this, but I've looked through the ones on the new forum, and the long "New Intel CPU" thread on the old one, and I still have no idea what I should get and who I should get it from. I'm a hapless techno-weenie, so building it myself isn't an option. I can't use my hands, and I want to be able to voice-recognition with the maximum accuracy and speed and the least amount of hassle. I am a screenwriter, so I use my computer almost entirely for word processing, and I need a notebook for portability. I'm willing to spend what it takes to get the best, but I also don't want to spend more than I have to. I looked at the computers at speakeasy, and they look good, but $2700 seems like a lot of money, especially if the prices are more than they should be as the New Intel CPU thread implied (but if it is the best to get, I'll get it). I've had bad experiences with Gateway and Best Buy, and the threads I looked at indicate that Dell are problematic. I need to know what my notebook should have to maximize my experience, what specific accessories (microphone, etc.) are the best to get (I'm not sure whether to get the Sennheiser ME 3 or the Plantronics wireless CS 55), and what vendors are good to get it from. I also need to know if I should wait a little bit until better systems come out. If you need any more information, let me know. Please help, or a least point me in the direction of a thread that can. Thanks!

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

JTreppel,

> Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.1 Preferred; Pentium 4 3.06 GHz;1 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 40 GB HD
> Gateway PC; Plantronics DSP 500 USB headset;

Frankly, many people would envy as good a machine as you have now. If you gave me that machine I would add another gigabyte of RAM. Next I would tune up the computer. First I would run a defrag. Next I would use a good spyware program like Spyware Doctor. Finally I would clean out any unnecessary files.

At this point, almost any program will run at the maximum possible speed. If Dragon NaturallySpeaking was still slow, I would consider creating a new user profile. It is possible your user profile is is bogging you down. "How should I train a new user in Dragon NaturallySpeaking?" in our FAQ Dragon section tells you our recommended method.

The Plantronics DSP 500 should perform okay in a quiet environment. We did not find them particularly comfortable. You would likely benefit from the Sennheiser ME3 modified for speech recognition along with an Andrea USB pod. The Plantronics CS 55 will also be good in a quiet environment.

Martin

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Martin Markoe - BANNED USER: This user has been banned from these forums

The RAM thing was one of my reasons for wanting to upgrade; I'm not sure if I can add any more RAM to the system. It also seems to have a lot of resource management problems. However, if you think defragmenting, a new user file, and a new headset would work to improve my speed, that would certainly be cheaper. I have a humidifier going next to me in order to keep my voice in good shape (Los Angeles is a very dry environment, and I used to have a lot of voice loss issues), and I like to listen to music while I write (which is probably a factor in the decreased accuracy). I suppose the Sennheiser would be the better option in that case?

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

JTreppel,

Trying the computer tune-up suggestions (Defrag, Spyware Doctor and cleaning out unused files) is easy enough and cheap enough to do. If you see an improvement after doing these tasks, then adding the RAM is worth looking into. You can get 2 Gigabytes of typical desktop computer RAM for under $200.00.

The Sennheiser ME3 modified will not pickup music playing in the background even if it is fairly loud. Make sure to go to our web page for the microphone and look at and perform the echo canceling task shown in the second movie (just click on the picture of the handsome mature man).

Martin

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Martin Markoe - BANNED USER: This user has been banned from these forums

Marty's advice is right on the money.  The only thing I would add to it is that your system should be upgradable to at least 4 GB of RAM.  The only thing that you might have to consider is that, since your system is a Gateway, it is highly likely that Gateway installed 2 512 MB RAM chips because your system is a dual channel Hyperthreading capable system.  Therefore, in order to ensure that Hyperthreading was enabled, each channel (i.e. 0 & 1) would have to be populated with at least one RAM chip of matching size.  Therefore, you can choose to upgrade by adding 2 additional 512 MB RAM chips to each additional available RAM slot (i.e., each channel contains 2 slots, your system is probably currently populated as channel 0, slot 1, and channel 1, slot 1.  You would simply install each new chip, 1 in channel 0, slot 2 and 1 in channel 1, slot 2).  This is what I would recommend simply because it is cheaper than going all the way to 2 1 GB RAM chips, which would cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.  In addition, your system is adequate for running DNS 7.0, but I wouldn't spend any more money on it than absolutely necessary because it is reasonably out of date and I would save any money for upgrading your system to a Core2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM if you were intending or planning on going to DNS 9.0/9.1/9.5.

In addition, I hadn't really reviewed the entire thread in this post.  $2700 is way too much money to spend on a good system for running DNS 9.  I'm not sure what their system configuration is, but you can get a good Core2 Duo (E6600 2.4 GHz) with 2 GB of RAM, a fast SATA II hard drive, and all the bells and whistles you need for approximately and/or under $1500.  The only thing you need to be careful of is staying away from those systems that are too proprietary (i.e., Gateway and/or Dell).  I build my own systems and my Core2 Quad with 4 GB of RAM (i.e., board, case, memory, CPU (Q6600) only cost me $1300 to build, and that was including the price of the Core2 Quad CPU which was 800 bucks.  A Core2 Duo system (CPU) is now available at under $350 for the E6600.  That's all you need.  Speakeasy is simply overcharging you (i.e., I suspect markup issues).  Regardless, bottom line is if you look around you can find a good solid system for well under what speakeasy wants to charge you, with all the bells and whistles needed for DNS 9/9.5.

(PS in case anybody questions my credentials in making these recommendations, I just recently received my update certifications for MSCE and A+ for Windows Vista, Windows server 2007, Windows Home Network)

Chuck Runquist
Former DNS SDK & Senior Technical Solutions PM for DNS

"We are all victims of mythology in one way or another. We are the inheritors, and many times the propagators, of a desire to believe what we want to believe, regardless of whether or not it is true." -- J.V. Stewart

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I'm going to try getting a new microphone first, but if I were, hypothetically, to get a new computer, would an Intel Mac book running Windows XP on virtual PC be able to run Dragon NaturallySpeaking and work with the Sennheiser microphone?  I've heard a lot of good things about Apple products, but I'm not sure about compatibility issues.


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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

JTreppl,

Did you pursue the idea of buying a Mac and its compatibility with the Dragon? I am a Mac User grown frustrated with iListen. I have installed Windows XP Home, Service Pack 2 on a 17" iMac, Intel Core Duo 2.0mHz processor and do NOT run Windows as Virtual PC). When I want Windows software, I use boot camp and the iMac operates with Windows. Normally, I run OSX.

 Nuance had this to say as of  7-8-2006:   

With the introduction of Apple Boot Camp for Intel-based Macs it may be possible to install and then run Dragon NaturallySpeaking after booting into Microsoft Windows XP. However, this is untested and not supported at this time.  D

Have you heard of anyone doing this?

 

Thanks,

benyamin aish 

 

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Standard; Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GHz;1 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 120 GB HD- Intel iMac; Parrot/TalkPro Express USB headset; started with iListen 7.

I haven't, sorry.  I'm thinking I might just try to find a PC that suits my needs.  Less opportunity for disaster that way.


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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

In case anybody wants to know the truth about whether NaturallySpeaking works on Intel Macs, I can tell you from firsthand experience it does.  And it works very well.  I'm typing this message using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9.5, under Windows XP Professional with 2 GB of RAM, using an Andrea USB pod and Sennheiser microphone.  I can tell you that the performance is just as good as my 3 GHz Core Duo Dell at work.  I've also ran NaturallySpeaking under Parallels Desktop for Mac with equal success and awesome performance on a 2.6 GHz Mac Pro.  Thanks...

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Dragon in use.  Occasionally mistakes are made.  I correct the ones I notice... 

I don't know if anyone is even looking at this thread anymore, but my hand may have been forced with the new computer thing... my fan is making noises, and Gateway wants $300 and for me to send it in to repair since it's out of warranty.  Now, that's definitely cheaper than getting a new system, but it's a three year old machine, and if I'm going to drop several hundred dollars, I may as well go all the way.  Besides, Gateway's repair service is ungodly slow, and I can't go for another week without my machine.  Does anybody know a good vendor that isn't too expensive and has good technical support?  Like I said above, I was thinking of getting and Intel Mac book and running Windows XP through boot camp.  I hear Apple has great customer support.  I'm just not sure if a Macintosh will run all of my peripherals, even if it's Intel and running XP.

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

CPU development has slowed. 

It seems we have been hovering around 3 GHz and not much more for quite a period of time.  It would be interesting to see how the speed curve for CPUs has plateaued of late.

 

Does anyone have any insight into the impending releases of superfast computers?

First, you're only looking at the surface. CPU development has not slowed. In fact, if anything, it has increased in pace. However, speed is no longer the issue for several reasons.

1. As you increase speed, you increase power consumption, which shows up on your system's as heat. Heat is anathema to electronics. Intel and AMD have found that increasing the speed beyond 3.93 GHz creates too many problems.

2. The current research has been primarily concerned with multicore technologies and decreasing the size of the chips. Current CPUs have gone from 90 nm down to 45 nm. However, the smaller the chips get the greater the performance problems in terms of heat. Therefore, current research is concentrating on performance (CPU instruction sets, true parallel processing, increasing the amount of L2 cache, increasing performance by the addition of multiple cores, etc.). In addition, decreasing the size of chips introduces an additional problem in terms of the fact that the traces (connections between transistors) in size reductions decrease the distance between transistors and their various connections. This tends to introduce increased EMF problems, reducing performance. This is particularly true as the speed increases.

3. As I have already indicated, speed is no longer the issue in R&D on CPUs. There are notable improvements in performance even with the corresponding reduction in overall CPU speeds. For example, a Core2 Duo E6600 running at 2.4 GHz is up to 5 to 10 times faster in overall performance than a Pentium D dual core running at 3.93 GHz.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. If you're referring to CPUs with more than 4 cores, that technology is between a year to a year and a half away from even being announced. If you're referring to Core2 Duo's, Core2 Duo Extremes, and Core2 Quad's, these are already out and available.

However, there is no significant advantage in terms of overall performance with DNS between the current Core2 Duo 2.4 GHz systems and the Core2 Quad systems that are currently available. In other words, you can't get faster performance than instantaneous display of text during dictation. The speed of these systems relative to DNS is due primarily to the increase in the amount of L2 cache, more effective use of L2 cache and RAM, and greater performance via new instruction sets and "true" parallel processing vs. the pseudo-parallel processing available in Pentium D Dual core CPUs and earlier P4's with hyper threading. These older systems are not using "true" parallel processing. They are manipulating the core(s), L2 cache, and RAM to make it look like "true" parallel processing. This is much slower than the current technologies by a long shot. For example, the Core2 Quad's running at 2.4 GHz with 8 MB of L2 cache, and 2 to 4 GB of RAM actually perform anywhere from 10 to 20 times faster overall than the fastest Pentium D Dual core Intel 950 or the AMD 64 dual core systems. However, in terms of DNS, there is actually no real significant difference between the bottom line Core2 Duo with 4 MB of L2 cache running at 2.4 GHz and the Core2 Quad running at 2.4 GHz with 8 MB of L2 cache. Besides which, the cost/benefit is minimal. You can get the same general level of performance from a Core2 Duo running at 2.4 GHz with 4 MB of L2 cache and 2 GB of RAM as you can get from a Core2 Quad system. But, the difference in cost is almost $1000.

Therefore, my guess is that what you're referring to as "supercomputers" is really what is available right now in terms of Core2 Duo and Core2 Quad CPUs from Intel, and the equivalents to be released later this year by AMD. There might be an additional improvement that would be anywhere from noticeable to significant in terms of the Core2 Quad Extreme, which will run at 2.93 GHz, but you will pay through the nose for this one (i.e., almost $2000 for the CPU alone).

Chuck Runquist
Former Dragon NaturallySpeaking SDK & Senior Technical Solutions PM for DNS

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but, I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Does DNS run as fast on Vista with 2 GHz of RAM as it does on XP?  I tried everything that was suggested, and I'm still not getting the performance I want from my machine, besides the mechanical problems.  I'm looking at a HP Pavilion DV9000z notebook with AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-64(2.2GHz/1MB), 2 GB of DD 2 RAM (which is the highest upgradable amount), and 200GB 7200RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (100GB x 2), which comes preinstalled with Vista, but since Vista is more memory-intensive, I don't know if that's going to just cancel out the RAM/processor upgrade.  Or should I just wipe the hard drive and install a copy of windows XP?

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

NaturallySpeaking DEFINITELY runs slower on Windows Vista because Windows Vista is a slower operating system.  Our preference is for 2 Gb of RAM on Windows XP and 3 or 4 Gb of RAM on Windows Vista.  We are probably a little outdated on our computer specs but we think you are currently better off going with an Intel chip because they include higher cache which is very important for NaturallySpeaking.  Of course FDSKing your current drive and reinstalling Windows XP is also a lot of work to go through.  We recommend trying Vista, since it came preinstalled, and see how you feel about the speed.  If you feel like you're taking a performance hit then an FDSK, followed by a Windows XP installation, may be in order.

Our test computer has Windows XP on one drive and Windows Vista on the other so that we can switch back and forth.  Vista is the hands-down winner for eye candy and there are a lot of improvements but the warnings are annoying and the performance hit is somewhat troubling.  Another Vista annoyance is the fact that many software and hardware manufacturers have not yet caught up.  Practically everything Adobe Acrobat makes is still months away.

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Okay, now I'm looking at a ThinkPad T60 Wide 8743 CTO notebook.  You can actually customize it to have windows XP instead of Windows Vista, which sounds pretty good to me.  They use the Intel Core 2 Duo, but should I get 2 GHz, 2.16 GHz, or 2.33 GHz?  NaturallySpeaking is the most intensive program I will be running, and I know that at a certain point it becomes instantaneous, so I don't want to spend money on extra speed that I won't use.

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Preferred; 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 3 GB RAM; Windows XP Home SP 2; 100 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM; Sennheiser Mk3 with Andrea USB pod; started with DNS 7.0.

The key here is not the speed of the Core2 Duo.  The key is the amount of L2 cache.  Make sure that it is 4 MB.  Other than that, there is no significant difference between 2 GHz, 2.16 GHz or 2.33 GHz.  Relative to the Core2 Duo technology, you generally won't get any better performance out of the 2.16 GHz or 2.33 GHz processors vs. the 2.00 GHz.  Just not significant enough of a speed increase to justify the cost vs. the performance/benefit.  My laptop, which is a Gateway Platinum Core2 Duo 2.0 GHz with 4 MB of L2 cache and 2 GB of RAM runs DNS 9.5 just fine under Windows Vista (i.e., virtually instantaneous display of text, occasionally may be a one second delay depending upon what's going on in the background) and that's the toughest test the performance because Vista is system intensive and requires at least a Core2 Duo to run anywhere near efficiently performance wise.  Therefore, if DNS 9.5 runs fine on that system, it'll be just as good or better on Windows XP with that hardware configuration.

Chuck Runquist
Former Dragon NaturallySpeaking SDK & Senior Technical Solutions PM for DNS

There are two types of learners: Those who don't want to hear it, and those who can't get enough of it.  The former seldom succeed, virtually never become leaders, and fail to understand that it is less important to know than it is to learn how to find out.

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I'm also using a Mac for DNS.  I'm new to this, but it's working well so far.  I have a MacBook with 2GB RAM, 4MB cache and am running BootCamp.  It partitions the hard drive, so you either boot up as a Mac or as a PC.  It's quite an impressive solution to the Mac/PC dilemma for those of us who love our Macs.