Developer Forum

I'm working on 256MB of RAM. I have heard that I need more.
In fact, as I close Dragon, after it asks me to 'save user files'?,
and I press yes, it tells me something about having to open some
acoustic files for space.
Would additional RAM solve this problem, and so I wouldn't get this
message?
Thank you.

All I know is that when I went from 512 Meg RAM to 1 Gig RAM with
Windows XP, Dragon ran faster and smoother. Saving your acoustic files
is not recommended. There have been too many reports of corruption of
voice profiles after using them.

Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
See us at: http://www.yqcomputer.com/
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy" at:
http://www.yqcomputer.com/

But I have no choice! It pretty much tells me if I want to save my
user files, I have to open the acoustic files -- I can get you the
exact message.

I don't know about the acoustic files thing.

I have been running NS 7 in Windows XP with 1GB of RAM. At the same time, I
have had Performance Monitor running in order to measure free RAM. I run
other big programs at the same time including Visual C++ NET 2003 and Xnews
(great free newsreader which uses a lot of memory). I have yet to use half
of the 1GB. My experience is not perfectly conclusive, however, if adding
256MB of RAM is very much easier for you than adding more, consider adding
only 256MB (unless you expect to need more memory at some later time and do
not have any more free memory slots).

Good luck.

In the Dragon Toolbar, open Tools, then Options. Click on the
Startup/Shutdown tab. Remove the checkmark from Automatically save
user files without asking. In the drop down list for Save recorded
dictation with document, choose Never.

In addition, we almost never save our user files after the first hour
of use making corrections. And in that first hour of use making
corrections we are very diligent. The problem is, user files will
become corrupted if you make a correction incorrectly. Then is if you
make a typing error, or select the wrong words and correct. These type
of things are much more common than you might think. You can see what
I mean if you go to the Words menu and choose View/Edit.

Of course, if you are limited to add only another 256MB of RAM, that
is preferable to what you have now. But, experienced users who use
several programs or more at a time know that even more RAM is better.
Although someone may try to monitor RAM usage, they need to also
monitor the swap file because Dragon will swap out to that even with
lots of RAM.

Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
See us at: http://www.yqcomputer.com/
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy" at:
http://www.yqcomputer.com/

A couple things. 1st, I'm aiming at adding 512MB of RAM. It's as
easy as less, just more expensive. Thank you for your comments, John,
on not using your entire 1 gig of RAM.

Martin, do the steps you outlined for me have to do with that acoustic
files thing? I include now the exact message I get (after I Click
"yes" on Save user files? at the end of my Dragon session): "You
need to increase the size of the acoustic archive to store the data
from your corrections. The data will be used by the Acoustic
Optimizer to increase your recognition accuracy. Do you want to
increase the size of the acoustic archive?"

A mystery to me. I hope adding the 512MB gets rid of that strange
message (I haven't bought them yet by the way)

By the way, Martin, I just checked, and the 'Automatically save user
files without asking' was not checked. So it hasn't been doing that.

: In addition, we almost never save our user files after the first hour
: of use making corrections. And in that first hour of use making
: corrections we are very diligent. The problem is, user files will
: become corrupted if you make a correction incorrectly. Then is if you
: make a typing error, or select the wrong words and correct. These type
: of things are much more common than you might think. You can see what
: I mean if you go to the Words menu and choose View/Edit.

when you add vocabulary, either explicitly or via correction, and when you
add commands, do you need to 'save user files' to save those?

-- mark by hand

--
To reply by email, remove the obvious spam-blocker from my edress.

Mark A Mandel wrote

There has been some controversy about what needs to be done to save
corrections and commands. It seems to me that when corrections are
made by voice (by saying correct ....) they are saved. It is rare to
go back and correct again either in the same dictation session or any
future sessions. By the way, I almost always correct in context with
the word before or after, or both before and after misrecognized word.

For difficult to train corrections, I highlight the text either by
hand or using the select command. Then I say, "Make that a shortcut."
This technique takes care of those occasional words or words that do
not want to be recognized.

Martin Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.
The best microphones for Speech Recognition
See us at: http://www.yqcomputer.com/
Read, "Key Steps to High Speech Recognition Accuracy" at:
http://www.yqcomputer.com/