Dragon has developed a reputation for delivering very high accuracy rates for its speech recognition software. However, compared to some of its rivals it has lacked some frills and functionality in its command interface. Version 5 reviewed here has addressed some of these concerns.

A great deal has happened at Dragon Systems since the release of NaturallySpeaking version 4. At the beginning of the year the company was acquired by Lernout & Hauspie, a relative giant in the speech recognition and language translation business. L & H produces what was once the rival speech recognition package, Voice Xpress. Version 5 of Voice Xpress was launched at the same time as version 5 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Although the two products have effectively been developed under one corporate roof for the last six months, they remain quite different.

The Dragon product has continued its emphasis on bottom line recognition accuracy. Even after the minimum enrolment and training period, when first installing the software, we were able to get very impressive recognition accuracy. Dragon claims the recognition engine has been further improved over version 4. We have no reason to disbelieve this claim, although it is difficult to judge as version 4 was already very good.

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More importantly, significant improvements have been made to the user interface. Until version 5 you either had to launch NaturallySpeaking from within one of the limited number of supported applications, like Microsoft Word, or by running Dragon's own speech-enabled text editor. Now, falling into line with most of its competitors, Dragon has introduced the DragonBar, which floats independently of other applications, but enables dictation into practically any Windows application which has text input.

Outlook users, for example, will be pleased to hear that dictation into email messages is now much improved. With version 4 you could dictate into an email window but correction and formatting commands were severely limited compared to specifically supported applications. This is no longer the case if you use the DragonPad editor. The old correction dialogue procedure wasn't very convincing but this has been re-engineered with the introduction of a feature called QuickCorrect. This shortens the route to the correction dialogue box, provides more sensible correction choices, plus one-click access to related features like training. It's a shame QuickCorrect can't be used in other applications.

On the hardware side, a Labtec noise-cancelling microphone is provided and this works well, apart from the fact that the single headphone and microphone boom can only be worn on the left, which is very strange if you're used to wearing a right-hand headset microphone.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 5 is a subtle evolutionary improvement over version 4. Multiple application support is much better than before but NaturallySpeaking still doesn't have a natural language command interface to match Voice Xpress. On the other hand, the Dragon speech recognition engine is undeniably better than that of Voice Xpress. Logically, Lernout & Hauspie will be working to combine the best features of each of their packages to produce a sledgehammer of a voice recognition package in the future. However, in the meantime it does seem a little mean that existing version 4 users don't appear to have a discounted upgrade option.