Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss a shelved Apple messaging feature, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft releases and servers, a phone repair merger, an app-controlled washer and dryer, a Nest device that can alert users to packages waiting at the door, USPS Informed Delivery, and more.

Larry in Koshigaya, Japan listens to the podcasts and asked: “Is there a program to do voice to typing besides DragonTalk, that is inexpensive and that will work with OpenOffice. DragonTalk, at $300, is above my budget, so I want something that’s inexpensive but effective.”

Larry, there is nothing that’s truly comparable in quality or in features.

There are plenty of speech recognition programs, but they all fall very short very quickly in our experience.

For example, SpeechTexter sounds good, but it only works in Chrome.

Speechnotes is free it sounds pretty good, but it only works in Chrome.

dictation.io doesn’t only work in Chrome! But it only works in a browser…

Dictandu may work for you, but there’s no real way to know because they don’t seem to share pricing unless you sign up for a free trial first (it’s also designed for blogging, so it may fall a little short of your expectations).

Nuance pretty much owns the market if you need to use your dictation software offline or if you’re unwilling to copy and paste the output from a browser to your text editor, unfortunately.

Google, Microsoft, and IBM all offer very solid B2B options though, so there may be more competitors entering the market soon if any of those tech giants sense that they could make some money by selling directly to consumers.

Eddie in Prattville, Alabama listens on TuneIn and asked: “Are the laptops on HSN and QVC any good? and why don’t y’all have an app on the Microsoft Store?”

Eddie, there’s nothing wrong with laptops that are sold on TV rather than by other means, but you can probably find better deals elsewhere.

If for no other reason that those shows having a timer that tries to push you to buy before you can do some research on your own and see how their claims stack up to real users experiences and to your own needs.

Whatever they offer you there won’t cost any less than a comparable laptop bought from a reputable retailer or from the manufacturer. If you notice the prices seem very cheap, you’re probably looking at a machine that is very old.

Other than that, there’s nothing truly wrong with them, they’re not scamming you, they’re just pushing you to buy now when there are smarter ways to do your research and choose a product that you can be sure will meet your needs instead.

As for the Microsoft Store, frankly, because your computer comes with a web browser and the experience you’ll get on our site will be richer and fuller than the experience you’d get from an app that will be more limited and will offer no real advantages on a computer.

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