I work for MacSpeech and wanted to answer a few questions found here:

Actually, you can train new words in MacSpeech Dictate — both on the fly (through the Recognition window) and offline (through the Vocabulary Editor). Very, very early versions didn’t have this feature. Rather than typing, you should train the words — otherwise how will the software learn how you speak?

A USB headset is required. The internal microphone isn’t suitable for speech recognition with high accuracy.

There is no difference between MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 and “MacSpeech EDU”, other than the price and licensing (the EDU version is for students).

I received this in the mail last night and have been practicing with it for several hours today. It’s amazing how accurate this is when I speak in a normal tone of voice and that my normal speed of talking,

I’m still learning the commands but many of the commands are intuitive. (practice makes perfect)

I also love the ‘go to sleep’ and ‘wake up’ commands. I’ve used them when I want to talk to other people around me or when the phone rings and not confuse Mac speech dictate.

By the way, this is my first experience with speech to text software. I find that the more I practiced, the more things I’m able to do with text-to-speech. It’s actually fun to find out how you can make MacSpeech Dictate do all the commands verbally without touching the keyboard.

OK, that’s my take on MacSpeech Dictate. I think it’s a great product easy to install and easy-to-use.

cannot add/train new words as you can in ‘dragon’!
kludgy and intermittent problems that take time!
doesn’t recognize many words – so they must be typed.

yes – very good recognition!

now you have an unbiased assessment…

However, i was wondering if there is a way whereupon i can use MacSpeech Dictate ‘without’ using the headset i.e. using ‘only’ the MacBook Pro’s Internal Mic.

Many Thanks

Steven-Andrew