August 18, 2010 and

I have been using successive versions of Dragon speech-recognition programs since 1995, so I’m not a beginner at talking to my computer. Earlier this year I decided that it was time to upgrade, and it seemed sensible to explore WSR since it’s free. Online postings indicated that the program would be very usable for someone with disabilities who needs virtually hands-free computing. I understood that I would have to create almost all of my own commands, but I expected dictation to be effective.

Now, after several weeks of using WSR, , I’m very frustrated and baffled. How can your reviews be so favorable and my experience be so terrible? Do I have a defective copy? Can it be a microphone problem?

You

Carol

Failings of WSR

Frequently, for no obvious reason, it stops responding to anything I say. Often the only way I can get the system to start responding again is to switch, by trackball, to another file or program for a minute or two.

Crucial commands like “what can I say,” “go to”, “press [key],” “click [?],” and “show numbers” work sometimes, but far from reliably. Very often when the numbers do show up and I speak the number I want, nothing happens.

Sometimes when I speak a command or dictation, the little box at the extreme upper left hand corner, near File, opens instead. Then nothing will work for a while and I have to click around randomly until the system starts listening again.

Dictating a number by saying “numeral [?]” works less than half the time.

Saying “caps” at the beginning of a word, to capitalize it, seldom works. And