Speech recognition hurts the brain

I am attempting to write a post using Windows Vista speech recognition software.

I have gone through the tutorial, and I have spent some time trying to work out the various commands.  It has taken a little while for me to get used to this new system.  I assume that the speech recognition will get better with time as the programme learns my voice.

I should really have timed how long it takes me to write this, so for interests sake that time there is now: 2.56am

So I'm finding that it is quite difficult.  Sometimes it gets an entire sentence right in one go, but sometimes it gets a lot of things wrong and I have to correct some of my words.

I have found writing to be slower, and that my brain is constantly pulled back as I need to review what I have typed (or in this case what I have spoken and what the computer has decided that I have said).

So to type the last two paragraphs it has taken me about 10 minutes, which is really shit.

Unless this piece of software is improved dramatically, I cannot really see it being of use to me, though I can only imagine the possibilities that something like this would bring.  In theory, and this is in slightly bad taste, I could loose my hands in an accident and still be able to work a computer and type emails.  However if things took as long as this then I would probably hit my head against the nearest wall.

I shouldn't really make fun of it though. Even though I have just given up (it's now 3.16am), I'm still amazed by what it can do. I won't be using it for anything other than showing my mother what computers can do now 😉 Obviously, it shouldn't have taken me 20 minutes to write 4 fairly short paragraphs, and it definitely felt like it took a lot more mental effort than typing.

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