Best Buy ad: Misleading?

[Guitarman]

Was watching the newest geek squad / best buy ad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro-7D8eVy1I and it shows a guy getting his notes on his computer hands free. Bit of digging and I found out the program is called "Dragon Naturally Speaking". Does anyone have any firsthand experience with this? The youtube comments claim it's pure false advertising, that I wouldn't be able to set up a laptop to take a professor's notes in that way. Any truth to this? I really don't want to pony up 100-200 bucks just for something I can't use.

[rezn0r]

i haven't used it, but i'm pretty sure it does work... if you are close enough for it to clearly hear you/whoever is speaking. i assume you'd need to amplify the professor's voice enough for your system to pick it up which may be a pain in the ass if even possible.

[Isiolia]

Haven't used it myself really, but it's a product that's been around for quite some time.

Main problem I'd see from a technical standpoint is that you're not able to control the input level, acoustics, etc. It usually also needs to "learn", but the claims on their site is that it barely needs it now. Hard to say - particularly if the vocabulary of your class is more esoteric. Still, it's not something that Nuance even lists as a suggested use - their "note taking" suggestion is for someone reading a book or web site, wearing a headset mic, dictating notes that way.

IMO, start with the more practical matters of whether you're able/allowed to use a laptop in a class, use recording in general (maybe not quite the same, but still), or what else you might still need to record anyway. Obviously for a class with a lot of formulas or diagrams, it'd be pretty worthless, which is a downfall for most computerized note taking short of a tablet.

[DAKPluto]

Dragon is pretty damn good. Even the iPhone version is pretty damn accurate. But yes, you would run into the audio issues mentioned above for recording. Is it misleading...to a point. In the situation shown I doubt the built in mic would record him well enough for the program to be accurate enough. But is it possible? Without a doubt. The software is there, and works very well. In a more up close setting than what is shown, it would record the other person pretty well.