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Originally Posted by kazzxtrismus
ok.... why cant we get something that doesn't need a data connection to work?
dragon naturally speaking has been arround since the dx66 desktop
im sure were all running faster processors than 66mhz
a 4gig memory card is more space than imagineable at that time too
why the heck do all these new apps require a data connection??
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First of all, I don't remember Dragon being all that good, especially not on a 66Mhz machine. It would fail with any kind of background noise, such as you'd have in a car. I have a co-worker who tried it and only got it to work a little at certain times during the day, and we found it is was because of the sound of the air conditioner units running in the background at certain times every day.
The times that we'd want to use voice transcription are likely never to be the perfectly quiet environments this kind of precision requires.
Why is sending it to a server better?
Because MS (and Google with their Goog-411 service) have special audio processing servers that run complex filters and algorithms to determine exactly what it is that you said despite the background noise. This process requires a significant amount of intensive time-dependent calculation, the likes of which your home PC probably can't handle, let alone your mobile device.
Meanwhile, if you've used Microsoft Voice Command, you've seen that you can actually get a decent amount of voice recognition on the go without a cloud server, for things like queuing up music by artist title or commands like "What appointments do I have today?" "Next Track" or "Start Pandora Radio".
It is able to process these without any prior training, and gets it right even with some background noise and in varying vocal states. That's more than I can say about the old Dragon, although they may have gotten better with the later versions.
To put it simply- the technology in our phones is STILL not up to speed to do this satisfactorily. The only way around that bottleneck is cloud computing.
And since most people with a Smartphone also pay for data, its a no brainer. I'm sorry to say it, but I think your situation is something of an anomaly. I'd be surprised to find any other users of this forum that have current WM devices and not data!
Heck, my wife has a standard Samsung feature phone, and *SHE* has data, because it is included in our plan. She uses it sometimes, for the occasional Google Maps or mobile web spurt, but its just there for her to use. I don't know what carrier you are on or what kind of lousy plan, but it would be harder for some of us to have a decent plan WITHOUT data these days...
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I'm still not convinced $500/yr for any of these apps is worth it to me.
even if I did choose to donate to all of them for their real development worth i'd be short of the $500. (for the 3-5 apps i'd buy)
let alone having to pay it again next year to continue using the programs.
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I'm not sure I understand what you are referring to. Donate to whom? Microsoft? For creating this app for us? And for crying out loud my entire year's worth of bills isn't even $500, and I have a data plan...
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not cause I'm cheap... but beause I dont care to give the telecoms 15x the $ value for basic data that gets lost in the regular data stream after the tower
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Jeez, sounds like you're on the worst carrier ever! I don't think any of us share your sentiment, and I'm not sure I even understand the problem here... or why you'd choose to have an expensive device designed for connectivity, but skimp on a data plan.