It's a few years since I've posted.  I've had a brief attempt at naturally speaking 10 and have managed to complete initial (special) training.

Firstly let me go into some history and why I'm currently using DragonDictate (yes I mean DDWIN 3.02 UK classic) [apologies for those that remember my history-nothing has changed for the last few years].

I work in Scottish local Government as a software engineer, usually developing with the .NET platform.  Obviously in the early nineties I started using the discreet software recognition package DragonDictate.  Over the years I have made various attempts at training naturally speaking, however owing to a slight speech defect (I have cerebral palsy) all attempts, until now, have not succeeded.

When my work started using the .NET environment, I had trouble running DDWIN alongside this software.  Anyway we managed to source some equipment from America called the TAP (total access port).  With this equipment, I effectively use 2 PCs at once-DDWIN on an old PC, with the tap "stuffing" keystrokes and mouse commands to the xp machine.  This solution works well.  However it's not supported and no longer commercially available.

From time to time, I try new versions of naturally speaking 10.  I have a copy from a small UK company which specialises in the disabled market.  With version 10 having a special training option, for, among other things, people with speech impediments, I wondered whether it would work this time, which it did to a point.  However I initially had 4 failed attempts at training.

 Firstly I tried 3 attempts at doing special training, reading Charlie and the chocolate factory, reading between 10 and 30 minutes.  Each time, when naturally speaking was adapting my voice files, I received an error-"notenoughspeech data".  Between my second and third attempt, a colleague, without speech issues, tried it successfully.  That was on my office PC with a USB microphone.  A few days later, I tried again on a PC that I own (slightly higher specification with a sound blaster extreme music card).  First attempt, I tried reading 3001 a space odyssey-stupid it did warn it was a difficult (physically) read. 

then I tried one last attempt, again on my PC using Charlie and the chocolate factory-and successfully completed initial training.  Note, this was the first success of all my attempts throughout the years.  I then attempted some dictation.  Out of 1 paragraph it got several phrases correct and I think it even managed one complete sentence correctly.  Yes there were more errors than correct recognitions, but given my history, this was impressive!

Now I wasn't even trying at that stage to correct by voice currently, I was correcting by keyboard-which was why it was a short session and I've not tried since.

The company who I am dealing with think I would have success if they came up and assisted me for a couple days.

To this end I've drawn up a summary of the pros and cons of moving forward.  I'm attaching that document.  Note, the compatibility con, simply refers to the fact that at the moment, with my voice software and work software on different PCs, there can never be any conflicts.  Also it's probably irrelevant, since the conflicts I've had in the past, when using a single PC was because I was using DragonDictate far past it's shelf life.

 Also anyone had experience of using naturally speaking with visual studio 2003/2005 and Microsoft SQL server?

 Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks