I hate to type. I love land records. These two things do not go together.
I have found so much great information in land records and I am lucky that many of the records I need are in Maryland. In Maryland, all verified land instrument records are on-line (and free) through MDLANDREC. All that is needed to access the records is a username and password, offered with a free registration.
The problem with getting all these great records is that the older records are hand written. In general the copies are good, but they are tedious to read and even more tedious to transcribe, especially when you hate to type.
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| SOURCE – BALTIMORE COUNTY COURT (Land Records) WG RR, p. 0172, MSA_CE66-92 |
So since I had some gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, and a bunch of records to transcribe, I decided to spring for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I had heard some good things about the software and several administrative people in my office use it.
After my purchase I installed it and have been using it for about a half an hour. So far I love it! In fact, I’m not typing this blog, I’m having Dragon do it for me.
I was hesitant on buying a voice recognition program because I have problems with phone systems that can supposedly use verbal cues in their menus. But to this point I haven’t had any issues. During set up it had me read a few paragraphs of text so the software could learn my voice. Also, I have the TV on in the background and Dragon doesn’t seem to have an issue with picking up that noise.
I still have a lot to learn about the software, but to be able to go from installation to using it successfully in ten minutes is awesome. I’m sure the cost of the software will be prohibitive for some, but for me the amount of time it’s going to save his worth that cost. I purchased the Premium version which is supposed to work with spreadsheets, so I may not even need to worry about using Google Forms any longer.
Oh, and not only does this software type better than I do but it spells better than I do too!
Aunt Barb's Papers 