Efficiency - Your PC and Dragon NaturallySpeaking

by Adam Cronkrite
MCP, A+

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Hello, my name is Adam Cronkrite and I am the Systems Engineer at Achieve Results. I would like to share details regarding Dragon NaturallySpeaking and its interactions with programs such as Microsoft Word and how the performance of your PC can impact the performance of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

First lets talk a little about the performance of your PC and how it affects Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Like most programs, Dragon NaturallySpeaking requires RAM and processing power to run, however, since Dragon NaturallySpeaking listens to your voice and translates it into a form that your computer understands, it requires a little more out of your PC. Now this doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a whole new PC to run Dragon, but you should be aware of how many programs are running and how much of the resources they are taking up on your PC.

Let's say for example your PC has 512 Mb of RAM. Now before you have any programs open, Windows itself has programs running in the background as part of its normal operation. On average this may use up to 200 Mb of RAM, which leaves us with about 312 Mb of RAM for other programs. Each program you open or have running in the background needs to use RAM to run. Things like Yahoo messenger, QuickTime, Weather Bug, VirusScan, or a Web browser program, all need RAM to run. Let's assume as an average, each of these programs needs 20 MB of RAM to run. This would total about 100 Mb of RAM, subtracted from our 312 of available RAM, would now leave us with about 212 Mb of RAM. Now this is just a base estimate of what the program needs to start, as the program runs it may consume more RAM. Now at this point we haven't even started Dragon NaturallySpeaking. As a conservative base, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will use 256 MB of RAM. As we can see with only 212 MB of RAM available, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking wanting 256 MB of RAM, we don't have enough available RAM to allow the software what it needs to run properly. This would cause a Dragon NaturallySpeaking to not work at its peak efficiency.

Another aspect of your PC that can impact performance is fragmentation of your hard drive. Fragmentation can be defined as:

"The scattering of data over a disk caused by successive insert, update and delete operations. This eventually results in slow data access times."

In short, the more files you add or remove from your PC can cause it to slow down. How does this affect Dragon NaturallySpeaking? Whether or not you're using the program, other things you do on your PC can impact the performance of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

You may ask yourself, "What can I do to fix this?" Luckily, your Windows software comes with a defrag program called Disk Defragmenter. This can be defined as:

"A process (run by a defragging program) whereby parts of data files on all segments of a computer hard disk are taken from their fragmented state (parts of files spread all over the disk), and grouped together in complete-file segments. This makes it quicker for applications to find the files they need and frees up disk space, making the computer run more efficiently."

This process will help in the speed and efficiency of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software.

Another aspect that can affect the accuracy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the Sound card that you have installed in your computer. On the surface it may seem that all sound cards are the same, you plug in your speakers and sound comes out. This is generally true, however, we are not looking for sound to come out, but sound to be inputted, this is where the difference comes in.

There is a lot of technical stuff that goes into explaining the difference between 8-bit and 16-bit sound cards, and what this means to you and your microphone. I'm not going to bore you with this, I'll simply tell you that certain sound cards are not setup in a way to allow for good voice recognition. Nuance, the developer of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, runs tests against popular sound cards and rates their accuracy with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. A good 16-bit sound card is essential for good Audio Input Quality when using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Nuance offers a hardware compatibility list on their site, and if you are unsure of how to check your type of soundcard ask your fellow IT person or computer friend for help in identifying your sound card.

Now let's switch gears and talk about program compatibility. As programs change version they change functionality. Meaning Microsoft Word 2000 compared to Microsoft Word 2007, although they are both word-processing programs, the features and the functions of some of those features may change. This is when we run into what could be considered "compatibility issues".

This is why it is important to stay up-to-date with the programs you use. When Microsoft released Microsoft Office 2007, they changed the way certain portions of that program operated. This in turn prevented Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0 from interacting properly with Microsoft Office 2007, which made it so that certain commands stopped working properly.

In response to this change, Nuance released a product upgrade, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5, which had the compatibility to work with Windows Office 2007.

This is just one example of how changes in a program version can affect how other programs interact with it, like Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

In closing, I would just like point out that this just doesn't apply to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. RAM, Defrag's and Program compatibility are things that affect any programs that run on your computer and these programs would always benefit from a cleaner running PC.