Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 vs. IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Edition Version 10

Paul Ferrill tested the two main speech-to-text solutions currently available on the US market. For this review, Ferrill looked at Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional Version 8 and IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Edition Version 10. Both products come with a high-quality noise-cancelling headset from Andrea Electronics, although they use different models. Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes with Model 91, while ViaVoice includes Model 61.

Both products offer similar speech-to-text capabilities, although the target market is obviously different. Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes with a number of features specifically for enterprises, which let users store voice profiles on a central server and transcribe audio files from digital recorders or any handheld device that supports the Microsoft PocketPC operating system. ViaVoice focuses more on individual users, providing most of the same functions as Dragon NaturallySpeaking without the enterprise extras.
 
Ferrill concluded in the Federal Computer Week article that: “Dragon NaturallySpeaking works well at what it does: text transcription and dictation support. Although it costs more than ViaVoice, it also offers more features and functions to justify the price difference.”
 
Read the full review on the website of the Federal Computer Week.