Dragon Naturally Speaking under Parallels vs Bootcamp

Matt Neuburg (apparently) - 11:23am Mar 6, 2007 PST
via email

This is from a reader, about a subject I've been really curious about:
whether Dragon Naturally Speaking (dictation software) might work under
Parallels, just in case I should get an Intel Mac one of these days. I found
the reader's report interesting. It turns out that (with some fiddling) it
does work, which I find pretty amazing. On the other hand, this reader
thinks there enough advantages to running it under BootCamp instead that
maybe it doesn't matter after all.

> Bootcamp really looks like and acts like Windows, and responds
> similarly, with all the quirks one would expect. DNS works fine, no
> problems.
>
> Parallels does an amazingly good job. Dragon seems able to perform
> similarly, but with a couple of annoyances: The inputs, such as USB
> devices or CDs need to be selected and identified before they can be
> used. Sometimes Parallels says it's busy and to try again, but to no
> avail. I finally took Parallels off, including ALL the software I'd
> installed within it, reinstalled everything, and that seemed to
> help...some hours later! The problem was that I could not get it to
> recognize my USB headset which I'd specifically purchased for DNS. I
> have succeeded in using the headset once with Parallels now. The
> Nuance approved headset (Plantronics) gives an acceptable voice
> reception right off the bat. But even the iMac microphone managed to
> do OK, with no fancy set up, as long as I articulated very clearly
> and distinctly...but with no voice training yet!! DNS is a truly
> amazing program!!
>
> While there is probably some delay with the speech recognition, going
> through both DNS and Parallels, it does an amazingly good job. I
> felt comfortable dictating as I normally would. There is always some
> delay between actual speech and when it shows up on the screen, and
> when it actually gets typed into a document. I have not attempted to
> time and see how much more of a delay there might be, but, overall,
> it really doesn't matter. Essentially, then, what I'm saying is:
> yes, one can use DNS with Parallels on the Mac. Delightful!
>
> I find the screen for Parallels to be too small on the ordinary iMac
> screen (I have 24") to be too small to be really useful for many
> programs, including DNS, since one also needs a word doc open at the
> same time. There's no problem enlarging the screen to full size, but
> then one can't see the controls for it to identify a USB input
> device, for example. So you need to get everything set up with
> Parallels menus before enlarging the screen, or you need to go back
> and forth. I'm not sure Parallels has many more assets over Bootcamp
> (only drawback is needing to reboot to get back to the Mac side, and
> vice versa). If I had to choose one over the other, hmmmm. Not sure
> which I'd pick. I still haven't figured out all the quirks of
> Parallels, some of which have been annoying, but I suppose once I did
> that, maybe Parallels would have the advantage. But I haven't done
> so, so.............. Bootcamp is pretty straight forward, with no
> extra settings to get things to work, above and beyond what Windows
> brings to the table. I have not, and will not be trying either of
> these with Vista. At least not for a year or two until the wrinkles
> have been ironed out.

m.

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