Speech to Written Word. How with Microsoft Word?

[Denn Forever]

Hi all, I have a Netbook running Windows XP with Office 2007. 

Where is the Speech to Text/Letter function in Word?  Would I need special equipment e.g. microphones etc. to be able to dictate letters etc so that they would be word documents?

Hand writting gone to sh**e and typing speed not much better.

If there isn't a Word function, what other software could I use and where is it available?

Thanks.

[amallon]

I've seen a few people using Dragon Speech to Text

http://nuance.com/dragon/index.htm

You train to computer to learn your voice and away you go.  It integrates with Word, you press a button and it will start converting your speech directly into Word.  From what I've seen it makes mistakes here and there which you would have to look out for.

[Ulick]

Word doesn't have native speech to text engine, you'll need to install a third party application:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306901

Can't recommend any as those I've tried have been pretty shit, though I didn't have the patience to stick with them.

[Hardy]

I was doing a proposal once for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform using speech recognition. It wanted to send it to the Department of Justice, Equality and Chloroform.

The recognition accuracy can be pretty high (95% plus), but the dancing dog philosophy* doesn't apply here and people expect 100% performance from their technology these days and most people (including me) seem to get fed up after a while and give up on it.

*You don't expect him to do it well; you're impressed that he can do it at all.

[Billys Boots]

the dancing dog philosophy*

Jaysus, that sounds like it was made for government in Ireland.