VoiceComputer, the best speech recognition software, brings unprecedented usability and accessibility to Dragon. The reason is simple: Our Intag speech interface delivers t he simplest, most accessible, versatile and productive voice control of your computer ever. Since VoiceComputer is so easy-to-use, you can actually greatly reduce your mouse and touchpad use today. VoiceComputer:. Eliminates repetitive motion and the injuries associated with it.
Breaks the physical barriers that tie you to your computer. Delivers up to 100% hands-free computer control. VoiceComputer brings usability, productivity, ease-of-use and unprecedented accessibility to speech recognition. VoiceComputer is the all-in-one add-on for Dragon. It works with Dragon to let you control your computer with little or no mouse use, no keyboard, and no stress. Enjoy the easiest, fastest, and most accessible hands-free control of your own computer today. VoiceComputer features:.
The world's first global speech interface. Comprehensive and interactive help and training for Dragon. Fast and easy speech control of Windows, your applications, files and folders and the Internet. A voice mouse that brings fast and complete mouse control by voice.
Speak your patient’s story. Designed with a specialized medical language model and built-in medical vocabulary covering more than 90 specialties and subspecialties, you can count on outstanding dictation accuracy from the first use. Dragon for PC has many (!) more options for hands-free computing than Dragon for Mac. At least, at the time of writing this article. At least, at the time of writing this article. Having the option to use the mouse on a computer unlocks the possibility to learn to use the computer.
Hands-free microphone. Ability to create your own custom productivity commands, without scripting. VoiceComputer’s Voice Mouse is the most complete and productive speech-controlled mouse ever. Far faster, easier-to-use and much more powerful than Dragon’s mouse commands, our Voice Mouse is essential for those who need hands-free control of their computers. VoiceComputer’s mouse commands let you click, double click, ctrl-click, alt-click, shift-click, move, and drag and drop in a single command or two.
In addition, the Voice Mouse supports up to three monitors. 'the more I use it, the more impressed I am and love it!'
The VoiceComputer Microphone lets you enjoy complete hands-free accessibility. The VoiceComputer microphone is always listening in the background, letting you turn on the Dragon microphone, restart / shutdown Dragon (and VoiceComputer) and even restart / shutdown your computer. Is the Dragon microphone turned off? Just say, ' Wake up Wake up.' . Did the Dragon program crash?
Need to shutdown or restart your computer? Just say, ' Computer Computer.' and you'll be able to restart Dragon or restart your computer.
Our microphone, like the rest of our product, is unique. It uses a sequence of two commands in order to help prevent false positives (where the speech engine turns on the Dragon microphone or restarts Dragon because it misheard you).
VoiceComputer has dozens of navigation commands that let you quickly and simply move through your documents by voice. Get your work done with the easiest and most complete voice navigation commands available. For example, VoiceComputer lets you scroll and/or page up and down through virtually any Windows application and you can set the scrolling / paging speed from a blur to a line at a time. VoiceComputer even lets you move through other documents, web pages, or applications and copy from them, as you continue working in your own document. VoiceTeach, LLC has three principal specializations: Hands-Free Productivity Dragon’s core mission is great dictation accuracy. VoiceComputer’s core mission is home and workplace accessibility. That is why we deliver a new world of accessibility, productivity, and ease-of-use.
With half a dozen U.S. Patents & Pending Patents, VoiceComputer has reinvented speech computing. Rehabilitation VoiceComputer enables our users to return-to-work and school despite physical challenges that range in severity from RSI and carpal tunnel to quadriplegia and other severe physical challenges. VoiceComputer’s unprecedented voice access and control of your computer and applications will completely change what you can do with Dragon. Return to Work VoiceComputer delivers a whole new world of accessibility. Accessibility that delivers the highest possible productivity and ease-of-use so that for the first time ever, your company’s or agency’s Intranet sites, Citrix and legacy applications are accessible to your employees without expensive and time-consuming customization.
The Bottom Line: What Results Can I Expect When I Select VoiceTeach, LLC? Many VoiceTeach, LLC training clients achieve complete hands-free operation of their computers within hour of training. Others strike a balance between speech and manual input for their own optimum control, productivity, and efficiency.
Hands Free Computing Article
Whether that balance is at 50%, 70%, or 100% voice input. VoiceTeach, LLC enables high productivity, reliable operation, and complete satisfaction with the training services that we provide.
By using VoiceComputer in combination with Dragon, our training clients get to take advantage of the full VoiceComputer hands-free system. InTags In the first hour of training, our trainers provide a full introduction to Intag – the easiest to use and most powerful speech recognition technology. My Intags For users with proprietary applications like Citrix, that are not compatible out-of-the-box with speech, our trainers provide customization. With My Intags, your hard-to-control applications can be customized quickly and easily without the need to create and memorize hundreds of commands. The VoiceComputer Tutorial Program Our trainers also provide personalized lessons that incorporate the VoiceComputer Tutorial System which is available to our clients even when we are not. The Tutorial System provides more than 40 hours of lessons and demos and dozens of cheat sheets and At-a-Glance guides that teach you how to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking and help you remember commands.
Our Tutorial Program is the first help, demonstration, and tutorial program that is always just a speech command away and will bring you the information you need, when you need it, without blocking your work with unnecessary windows. Dozens of Other Hands Free Features Our trainers also utilize a full suite of hands free tools included in VoiceComputer. These features include the VoiceComputer Microphone, commands for fast and easy desktop control, voice copying, voice mousing, and thousands of custom productivity commands. Why do you need VoiceTeach, LLC? Our training is designed and personalized to cultivate success.
Our mission and passion is to make hands-free computing a reality and we will commit to each client fully to ensure our mission is accomplished. Since its introduction to the market roughly 20 years ago, speech technology accuracy and ease of dictation has greatly improved.
But even now, it is still a tool that requires, at a minimum, basic training and support crafted specifically to the needs of the individual user. While it is the case that some people succeed in their own, they are often the exceptions. Millions of speech software packages have been sold, but how many users give up within weeks of installation.
This is largely due to the reality that the applications most workers use today are not fully accessible with speech recognition or require too many complicated commands to be genuinely useful. VoiceTeach’s training and support services make the difference that enables you to succeed.
The support starts with careful evaluation and user support. We then determine what hardware is needed and proceed to proper installation and initialization of the speech package. This then concludes with personalized training, thorough documentation, and continued support.
Other than a few interesting years in the mid-2000s, Apple’s approach to the enterprise market has been one of benign neglect. The one exception, starting in 2005, has been consistent support for running Windows on Macs.
Hands Free Computing Dragon For Mac 7
By now, the practice is well-established. But the issue of management still looms large. How can IT deploy Macs that run Windows without multiplying the complexity (and cost) of deployment, maintenance and security by at least a factor of two? The enterprise question that vendors are now addressing in a variety of interesting ways is, “How can we make Macs running Windows securely maintainable components of the IT infrastructure and ecosystem?” Related: Windows on Mac works, and can work well.
The most relevant question for enterprises is which Windows-on-Mac virtualization options offer:. The best overall integration. The lowest TCO, including maintenance and security.
Good usability. End-user satisfaction How we tested running Windows on a Mac Apple test beds in our lab include a variety of Mac desktops and laptops (and even a few Xserve servers), but most cross-product benchmark testing for this review was done using fully upgraded 2012 Mac Pro towers as a reference platform. Though getting a little long in the tooth, they are quite fast, rock-solid and standards-compliant, and unlike more recent Macs, the hardware can be swapped, modified and expanded as needed (CPUs, RAM, storage, standard PCIe graphics and expansion cards, etc.). The primary Windows drives on the test platforms are on mSATA or M.2 SSDs run from a PCIe expansion card to maximize throughput and performance, but we also run baseline tests with virtual machines stored on standard 5,400rpm rotating drives to make sure performance is still acceptable with low-end hardware. I tested five Windows-on-Mac options in our lab — currently shipping versions of Apple’s Boot Camp, CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac, Oracle VirtualBox, VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop. They vary in cost, complexity and feature sets, and my perceptions of their pros and cons might help you decide which will be best for your circumstances. I will follow up in coming weeks with a deeper look at VMware Fusion’s upcoming version 10 and Parallels’ recently released Desktop 13.
To comment on this story, visit. Performance isn’t the issue Using a basket of benchmarks covering CPU, graphics and sample workflow measurements, performance was simply not a key differentiator in these tests. All of the products we tested are mature and stable, and aside from the natural differences between Boot Camp and the rest (native hardware support vs. Virtualization or emulation — discussed further below), the average performance difference between products in most circumstances was 10% or less. That is not to say there are not quantifiable performance differences, but rather that all of the products I looked at (sometimes with a little tweaking of virtual machine settings) can do what needs to be done with reasonable and effective speed — as long as what you want to do isn’t to play 4K-resolution twitch games at 60fps, that is. Virtualization always incurs processing overhead, and it will never be as fast as native, non-virtualized instances — which brings us to the first option, Boot Camp.
Apple’s Boot Camp was the first supported option allowing Mac users to run Windows on Macs, and if you need to get the absolute maximum speed out of your Mac hardware while running Windows, Boot Camp is still the way to go. A Mac running Windows via Boot Camp will perform at pretty much the same speed as a dedicated Windows machine with equivalent hardware specs — in fact, Macs have often made great higher-end Windows machines, and compatibility is usually not an issue (as long as Apple supports the version of Windows you need; see below). A big drawback with Boot Camp, however, is that every switch between Windows and macOS requires a complete reboot, which gets frustrating if you have to do it a lot. There can also be compatibility issues when accessing files on NTFS-formatted Windows drives from the Mac side — though third-party drivers are available, such as those from, that bridge that gap. And the new APFS drive format used in High Sierra is going to raise similar compatibility issues, at least until Apple or a third party comes up with a fix for reading APFS drives from Windows. Even an individual machine can be difficult to set up with Boot Camp, and of course a large, heterogeneous enterprise deployment will be more so. Adding stand-alone, unmanaged copies of Windows to your environment via Boot Camp may not be advisable from a security or manageability perspective.
Apple’s Boot Camp Assistant program, used to install Windows on an individual Mac, is certainly usable and does the job, but it’s not always the easiest program to work with, especially if you have a complicated hardware setup. (To be fair, this can at times have as much to do with how Microsoft’s Windows installers handle things such as multiple drives and drive formatting/partitioning options as it does with Apple’s installation process.) Expert users (and IT staff) should have no problem, but those used to fairly seamless and simple Mac installations may find it far from intuitive. And there is the fact that the combination of your hardware, the installed operating system version (macOS) and the version of Windows you want to run (especially if it’s an older version) might not be supported. The current version of Boot Camp (6.1) shipping with macOS Sierra (10.12) does not support installation of versions of Windows earlier than 8.1, so the newest Macs are not officially supported to install Windows 7 at all. The cutoff date for Windows 7 support for most Macs is 2014 — most Macs from that date or earlier can use older versions of Apple’s Boot Camp software (version 4 or 5) to install Windows 7, but more recent Macs will officially support Windows 8.1 or 10 only via Boot Camp 6.
Don’t panic, though. If the combination of hardware and operating system you want is not officially supported, there is almost always a fairly simple workaround.
For instance, while Boot Camp 6.1, which installs Windows 10, is not supported for my Mac Pro 5,1 (2012) test platform, Windows 10 can still be installed and works without a hitch — just without official support from Apple. Clearly, one of the advantages of deploying virtualized Windows on Macs as opposed to using Boot Camp is that you don’t have to deal with any of these issues — your virtualization program should handle all of these complexities for you, allowing deployment of any version of Windows you need on whatever Mac hardware you have. Furthermore, a number of the virtualization solutions either include or can be integrated with tools to help with the creation, migration and deployment of standardized VMs, greatly simplifying large-scale implementation and support. That said, using Boot Camp to run Windows on Macs provides unmatched bare-metal performance and has the additional advantage of being free (not including the cost of the Windows licenses). So for both speed and cost, Boot Camp is the baseline. At a glance Apple Boot Camp Pros: Free (Windows licenses are extra); great performance Cons: Switching requires reboot; compatibility issues; non-intuitive setup Best fit: Individual or small groups of users who don’t need to switch between OSs often, or who require maximum performance (Wine 2.0) CodeWeavers released the first version of CrossOver Mac in early 2007, providing a Windows compatibility layer based on the Wine open-source project. Basically, CrossOver Mac is a commercial version of Wine with a variety of enhancements and end-user support.
Richard Hoffman/IDG CrossOver Mac (and Wine) runs individual Windows programs directly in macOS, inside a container called a “bottle,” acting as a kind of translator between the Windows API calls and macOS. In short, you can run (some) Windows apps with CrossOver Mac without having to have a copy of Windows installed. This is an entirely different approach from Boot Camp, which assists in running a full copy of Windows directly on Mac hardware, and from the three other virtualization products in this review, which run an entire “guest operating system” (in this case Windows) within a VM. The catch (and you knew there had to be one) is that CrossOver Mac does not support all Windows programs, and those it does support are not always supported perfectly. CodeWeavers shoots for supporting as many of the most popular Windows programs as possible, and it currently supports nearly 15,000. It maintains an online inventory of programs that have been tested and either do or do not work (or work with bugs or workarounds), with a. But of course there are a lot more than 15,000 Windows programs.
For those programs that do work, however, performance can be very reasonable, especially on faster machines. This means that if you have a relatively small and defined set of Windows programs that you need to run on Macs, CrossOver Mac might be a good fit, but researching the compatibility database and doing thorough hands-on testing prior to implementation are essential.
CodeWeavers conveniently provides a 14-day free trial to allow time for testing before deciding whether to commit to a purchase. Installation of a single Windows app into a CrossOver Mac bottle is fairly simple and straightforward using the included installer, though perhaps it’s not something a typical business user would casually attempt. Once running, the Windows app appears on the Mac desktop without the surrounding interface (or overhead) of the full Windows operating system. CrossOver Mac Version 16 supports Windows apps going back to Windows 98, and all the way up to 64-bit Windows 10.
Pricing for CrossOver Mac depends on several options: a one-time purchase of the current version is $39.95 per copy. For $59.95 you get the current version, one year of free upgrades, and a single support call (phone support can also be purchased as needed for $19.95). A one-year plan can be renewed at a 50% discount. Finally, there is a lifetime license option (perpetual upgrades, unlimited email and phone support) for $499.95 per seat.
The standard one-year subscription is periodically substantially discounted, so watching for discounts (or negotiating for volume licensing) can provide cost savings. The next version, CrossOver Mac 17, is due to be released this autumn and will be built on Wine 2.8, will be compatible with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and will support Microsoft Office 2016 (which the current version does not). At a glance CrossOver Mac 16.2.5 Pros: Simple; small footprint; low cost; no need for Windows licenses Cons: Supports only some Windows applications; minimal management tools Best use: For a relatively small number of users, using a fairly small and well-defined set of Windows apps that have been tested to install and run under CrossOver Mac VirtualBox is the odd duck in this list, in a way. Having been acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 (which then became part of Oracle in 2010), it’s a commercially supported, open-source project (somewhat like CrossOver Mac), but it’s a well-respected, major virtualization product (like VMware). And it has some of the pros and cons of each. Richard Hoffman/IDG VirtualBox can do almost anything the commercial products can do, and the price (for the core package) is right. It has an extensive list of supported operating systems and enthusiastic online forums.
Developers tend to love VirtualBox, partly because the core product is free and open source, so it’s a good choice for a pilot project, or if you have a bunch of in-house developers who can adopt the project and make it part of their area of expertise. But compared to the offerings from VMware and Parallels, VirtualBox is less polished and less easy to use.
It’s a little clunky, lags a bit in speed and is lacking in some features. From an enterprise perspective, unless you can devote significant resources to it, you may be better off with one of the other options. At a glance VirtualBox 5.1.26 Pros: Cheap (or free); active developer community; widely used Cons: Lags in ease of use, some performance measures and feature set Best for: Small, low-budget pilot projects, or large enterprises with strong development teams Parallels may be the most intuitive and easy-to-use Windows-to-Mac virtualization product. It feels the most Mac-like.
Parallels has clearly given a great deal of attention to UI/UX issues since first launching in 2006. Richard Hoffman/IDG Installation of a new VM is easy and quick. Parallels does not support as wide a range of OS versions as VMware Fusion, but it does support Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 (and older versions via ISO files), as well as one-click installs of five Linux distros, Android x86 and various versions of macOS. A nice touch aimed at cross-platform developers is support for Modern.IE test environments.
Other developer-focused features include a network simulation module that can model degraded or minimal network connectivity scenarios within a VM.