AY THE WORDS "SPEECH RECOGNITION software" and most people think of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Dragon has ruled the roost for years, partly . because it's a perennially great piece of software, and partly from lack of competition. Even though Dragon now has rival products to contend with, it has secured its position as the leading voice-recognition software with this new version. Here you get new automation tools, im¬proved hands-free navigation, updates to the in¬terface, and increased accuracy and speed.

Most general-purpose versions of the product include an Andrea NC-19 monaural headset, but the $349 Preferred Wireless Edition substitutes a slick little Calisto Bluetooth headset from Plantronics. Dragon requires considerable PC muscle: a I-GHz CPU and 1GB of free hard drive space at minimum, as well as 512MB of RAM. During setup, you create a user account, which involves choos¬ing a language <U.K., U.S., Australian, Indian, or SE Asian English), a regional accent, and a micro¬phone connection type. A Vocabulary option lets you specify General, Commands Only, or Teen. The setup routine also requests that you read some of your e-mail and word-processing documents.

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All told, the installation process took me about 45 minutes .

I was very impressed at how accurately and quickly the program transcribed my test sqipt, showing only occasional blips even when I spoke without pauses between words. You can actually decide on how much speed to trade for accuracy using a slider-a handy feature. But is Dragon better than the free translation feature in Vista? With straightforward text both were identical, but on more difficult material Dragon made fewer mistakes than Vista. The more significant difference is that Vista shows a delay before producing text; Dragon was more prompt. Both programs let you launch other apps from the Start menu by speaking the command "Start menu." For subsequent com¬mands, Vista was more intuitive, but with Dragon, you also get time-saving Voice Shortcuts.

Despite some problems-for example, typing while Dragon is running sometimes slows your system down-and an interface that's not as polished as Vista's, Dragon Naturally Speak¬ing 10 Professional is a serious dictation tool that beats Vista in accuracy, speed, and customiza¬tion options, thus earning PC