Dear Lee,
     I have used Dragon voice recognition, as well as IBM's voice recognition software.Dragon I purchased off the shelf, and the IBM software came with a distribution 
of linux. The version of Dragon I have is the standard edition. It immediantly recognized both WordPerfect and MS Word upon installation. My only problem with it, 
was when I was first voice training. I had a bad cold, and my voice was very hoarse. I would say something, and it would spew out gibberish. When the cold went 
away, the gibberish went away. 
      The vocabulary of Dragon is geared towards business use, not the medical profession. Hence, it doesn't recognize most medical terms above the most 
elementary. This is the same for IBM's software. Both have a built-in teach function to enter new words into it's vocabulary. It's a bit tedious to use, but it does work 
well. Also, the version of Dragon I have is four years old, so I'm sure there have been improvements in the product. There may also be speical modules available for 
scientific and medical vocabularies. I have found it useful for general  purposes, and easy to use the voice commands. 
      I hope this has been of some help to you. 
     Sincerely,
     Paul Lockwood
1/15/03 5:57:24 PM, "D. Mayhew"  wrote:

>Dear Histonetters,
>
>Does anybody have any experience with Dragon voice recognition software
>for
>gross and/or microscopic dictation ?   If so,  could I have your opinion
>re
>its pros and cons, and how long it takes to train the system to
>recognize
>each voice, etc.  Is there  any advantage to using the Medical vs. the
>Standard version?
>
>Thanks in advance for any help.
>
>Lee Mayhew  MLT
>Niagara Health System
>St. Catharines, Ontario
>
>
>
>
>