The hardware:

Intel P4 2,4 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Neumann/Gefell M94 Mic with preamp. Level matched to SB live Line input.

 

The software:

Windows XP, DNS 10 Preferred, Word 2003 SP2

 

The problematic document:

Word document with 123 pages, 23,000 words, 3.3 MB in size and a few pictures only. When typing normally within this document, total processor utilisation, as measured with the program Cacheman, remains well below 10%. When dictating via DNS into this document total processor utilisation increases to 100% whereby DNS and Word demand about 45% each. DNS and Word seem to be fighting for processor time, for whatever reason. With smaller documents processor utilisation of DNS is around 50% whereby Word utilisation remains at about 6 to 10% and all is well. Total RAM utilisation is around 800 MB when DNS is working hard. Also the delay is longer in the case of single words. Accuracy is not impaired by the delay.

 

What cannot be done with this document:

Splitting the document into handy sections of about 50 pages each is not an option here because this will, when re-merging the document, mess up the automatic chapter numbering and the automatically generated 9 page long table of contents beyond repair.

Dictating into Dragon Pad and pulling the text from there into the document is also no option in this instance, since the document contains many tables with numerous single words. These were some recommendations for DNS 8 or 9.

 

What I have tried to make Word/DNS more responsive:

Working in the word text mode: no effect.

Working without displaying the pictures: no effect.

Working without the text and grammar correction: with this active, DNS was completely unusable. Only after switching this off the delay changed from infinity to 10 to 25 or even more seconds.

Working without automatic saving: no effect.

Shutting down Word Smart Tags: the delay reduces to approximately 5 to 15 seconds which is still too long to be really usable, especially in view of the many single words.

Set DNS to dictation mode: no effect

Various DNS speed to accuracy settings: no effect

Disabling of saving of user files: no effect

Disabling storing of corrections in archive: no effect

Disabling everything in the “Options” panel: no effect

Disabling everything on the “Commands” panel: no effect

 

What else could I do? There must in the case of long documents be something DNS/Word do together in the background thus eating up processing time.

 

Yours

 

(little) Dragonmaster

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DNS 10 Preferred, Windows XP, Intel P4, 2.4 GHz, 1 GB, SB-Live line input, Mic: Neumann/Gefell M94 with preamp for phantom power and line level output.

The answer to this is twofold:

1. You should perhaps, or definitely in the long run, consider upgrading your RAM to at least 2 GB.

2. Any Word document containing up to and more than 100 pages, with additional pictures and the like (although 3.9 MB doesn't sound that much, are you sure about this?), can easily cause problems resulting in the operating system being overloaded, at least it isn't really fun to work with even in Word, is it? And this isn't a DNS related problem in itself.

So, as has been asked here in this forum recently, and also answered, you could make use of the so called "master document" in Word, this making it possible to split up the long document into smaller chunks, chapters e.g., each being kept in its own file, and the master document combining them in such ways that pages, pictures, tables, cross-references and anything like that are numbered sequentially, as they should.

Do a search for this in the Word help, or type that into Google or anything of that kind.

In our office, we produce documents with more than 500 pages and more than 650 pictures this way, it's the only way this can be done in Word.

Rüdiger

 

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Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Dear Rüdiger,

thanks for the hint relating to the master document. The next time I receive such a large document I will certainly try to split it up accordingly provided this will not make the customer angry. In this case, however, the customer who created this 123 page document will with all probability kill me if I return it all split up. The document is really 3.9 MB, because most of the pictures will still have to be added by my customer (good luck to him). I will certainly not touch that document thereafter.

 

In my experience I have found that Word is basically unsuitable anyway when it comes to large documents with many pictures except perhaps when using the master document facility. It is here were real desktop publishing programs like come to their own. But tell this to someone who wants to work with Word only!

 

As far as RAM utilisation goes, DNS on my 1GB system uses around 210 MB with around 200 MB left regardless of utilisation. Just as a matter of interest: will DNS utilise more than 200MB for itself when running on a 2 GB or more system?

 

Anyway, in December I am planning to replace this Intel P4 by something better and more up-to-date.

 

Regards

 

(little) Dragonmaster

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DNS 10 Preferred, Windows XP, Intel P4, 2.4 GHz, 1 GB, SB-Live line input, Mic: Neumann/Gefell M94 with preamp for phantom power and line level output.

(Little) Dragonmaster,

you wouldn't have to let your customer know you split it up, make a copy of it and split up the copy. After editing the chunks, you can combine them again, and nobody will notice this. You can do this even without using the master document feature, depending on what kind of editing you have to do.

As far as overall utilisation of RAM is concerned, there are some others around here who can answer this in far more detail, what I can tell you is that as long as I had only 1 GB available for DNS 9.5, I really had hard times using it, even more so with application running like Word. But when I got a my new system, the specs of which you can read in my signature, I never had any problems at all as far as system ressources are concerned, and lags in DNS transferring text to the document are long gone.

Rüdiger

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Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!