Another day of testing at MacSpeech Dictate, and another day of amazement. Today had to go to court to look at the record in a pro bono case that I'm working on. The first order of business was to figure out the sequence of court events, which, of course, were somewhat different than my client had explained to me.
I logged onto the court computer and surveyed the docket entries. Then I jotted down the sequence of events. When I returned to my office I decided to test MacSpeech Dictate to see if I could quickly enter this information into CaseMap, the program I use to track my litigation matters.
First of all, CaseMap is a Windows-based program. I run it on my Mac using a virtualization program called VMWare fusion. So my question was: will MacSpeech Dictate allow me to input text data into a Windows program? I didn't think it would because MacSpeech Dictate runs on the Mac side, while CaseMap runs on the Windows side.
Turns out I was totally wrong about that, and I couldn't be happier.
I can use MacSpeech Dictate to input dates into the date field MUCH faster than if I were typing. For example, inputting the date 4/22/07 is kind of tricky for a non-expert typist because it requires using the slash key. Also, the numeric input on my Mac keyboard, for some reason, doesn't work on my Windows programs.
Using MacSpeech Dictate, I was able to quickly dictate my notes and have those appear in CaseMap. Something that would have ordinarily taken me 10 minutes to do by typing took me only two minutes to do by dictating.
I'm telling you, this is a really amazing program. I'm sure that Dragon NaturallySpeaking, on the Windows side, is even better. Of course, you have to have a decent computer and sufficient RAM. But, if you do, you find this process will increase your productivity very quickly.
P.S. If you want a practice optimized for remote work & virtual collaboration, get this 24-page guide.
Ernie:
I was employee #7 for MacSpeech and worked for them up until April of last year. I am now a Mac consultant and freelance writer here in New Orleans. If you need any help with MacSpeech or anything involving Mac or iPhone, let me know.
Chuck Rogers
I’m a Louisiana attorney and I’ve been using Dragon Naturally Speaking for about two years now. I am extremely happy with it. Although not perfect, the current version (Version 10) is very accurate especially after you work with it for awhile. The program learns as you use it and make corrections. You can also add words to the vocabulary. I use the Preferred version rather than the Legal version because it is cheaper and works well for me. I mostly use the program to type case notes, letters and emails.
I have had the same experience as you did with dictating dates. I had to do an spreadsheet a few months ago with lots of dates and numbers and I dictated the entire thing much faster than I could have typed it.