Chapter 19

Having Multiple Computers or Users

In This Chapter

Creating and managing users

Moving User Profiles to a new computer

Deleting a user

Backing up and restoring User Profiles

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, is famous for his ideas about change. He is quoted as saying, “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” Computer systems change faster than almost any other part of life: If something works, it must be obsolete. If you become a regular user of NaturallySpeaking, you and your NaturallySpeaking assistant will probably go through a number of changes together — new operating systems, new versions of the NaturallySpeaking software, or even whole new hardware. New users may come into your life as family members or officemates decide that they want to start dictating, too.

Some changes have been dealt with elsewhere in this book. In Chapter 18, I talk about hardware upgrades that may improve the performance of NaturallySpeaking: more memory, a better sound card, and a better microphone.

In this chapter, I look at how NaturallySpeaking solves the problem of multiple people, computers, environments, microphones, or hats. I show you how to use these features for better accuracy. (Hold onto your hat!)

Creating and Managing Users

NaturallySpeaking can’t understand strangers well, and sometimes it can’t even understand you well, if something about you changes: the way you use words or the way you sound. Consider it this way: Many people wear several hats. They are doctors and administrators, too; they are accountants by day and poets by night; or they are brain surgeons on weekdays and drill sergeants on weekends. Whichever hat they wear, they write very differently in those roles. They may also sound different because of the environments or microphones they work with at any given time.

If several people use your NaturallySpeaking software, or if you dictate using different words or writing styles, you may need multiple users. Here’s why and how to create and manage those users.

One person, different users

NaturallySpeaking understands only those who have officially introduced themselves as users and created a User Profile.

Here are four reasons why you may want to make more than one User Profile for yourself:

• You use different vocabularies or writing styles for different tasks.
• You use different microphones for different tasks (say, a cordless and a wired microphone).
• You want to use different NaturallySpeaking options for different tasks. For instance, you may want to turn off certain features to save memory when using NaturallySpeaking with big applications. (See Chapter 3 for instructions.) Option choices are part of the definition of a user.
• You have a laptop or other hardware and use it in two or more distinct environments (noisy/quiet, outdoors/indoors, in bed/in the pool, and so on).

The drawback of having more than one user per person is the extra vocabulary training of NaturallySpeaking that the person must do. Each user maintains his own training and experience, starting with the initial microphone check (Audio⇒Check Microphone) that you must repeat for each user. The same holds true for ongoing training. If you use the phrase “boogie-woogie” in both your personal and professional lives, for instance, not only do you have a very interesting life, but also you have to train both users so that Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognizes the phrase.

You can change or broaden NaturallySpeaking’s definition of a user, however. You don’t have to have a separate user for, say, when you have a head cold. Instead, you can choose Read Text to Improve Accuracy from the Audio menu and NaturallySpeaking will add its “head cold” experience to its previous experience of your voice. (See Chapter 17.) It will do better the next time you are sneezy (or grumpy or both). Likewise, if you run the microphone check, NaturallySpeaking changes the microphone volume to adapt to any change in microphone position. (See Chapter 18.) You can train a single user to broadly cover all the types of writing you do, too. The problem with broadening a user definition is that overall accuracy will go down to the same degree that you have distinctly different situations.

Adding a new user

Setting up a new user is a lot like setting up the original user: You’re off to see the New User Wizard. Invoke the wizard’s name in either of the following ways:

• Click the New button in the Open User dialog box when NaturallySpeaking starts up.
• From the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar, choose Profile⇒New User Profile from the menu.

After the New User Wizard starts up, it takes you through the same series of steps that you (may) remember from original installation. (See Chapter 2.)

Adding an old user to a different computer

What if the user you want to add isn’t really new to NaturallySpeaking but is just new to that copy of NaturallySpeaking on a different (or new) computer? Getting a new computer can be fun. Everything runs faster, the hard drive is bigger, it may cause you to get a bunch of fun, new apps that you can play with, and the screen is cleaner than your old screen ever was. But just like moving to a new neighborhood, moving to a new machine means going through a period of uncertainty as you wonder whether all your possessions will make it in one piece or whether you have to leave anything behind.

Or maybe it isn’t a brand-spanking-new machine. Maybe you’ve just decided that your NaturallySpeaking assistant should follow you onto your office computer or home computer, or vice versa.

In either case, the two main possessions that you would like to wrap in plastic and move to the new machine are your NaturallySpeaking software and your user files.

Owning a copy of NaturallySpeaking entitles you to have multiple User Profiles of your own voice (for example, from different sources) on your computer. You can also install it on your other computers if you don’t use them simultaneously. You are also allowed to enable two or more people to use NaturallySpeaking on your single computer and keep separate profiles for each person. When you install NaturallySpeaking, the activation process will follow how many computers you install it on. If you run over your allotted amount, you will have to uninstall one to load it onto a new one. See the Nuance website for more information on licensing users and activation.

Transferring your User Profiles to a new computer

DVDs don’t remember whether they’ve been read before, so installing NaturallySpeaking on the new machine is just like installing it the first time. (See Chapter 2.) I assume you have done this.

If you are transferring your User Profiles, you’ll be prompted to Import a User Profile.

In case you’re wondering, a new User Profile requires about 140MB of hard drive space. One of the easiest ways to transfer the files from one computer to another is to use a USB flash drive. This way, you can easily copy the files from the first computer and move them to another. Of course, if you have a preferred method for moving files, use that.

You always move the User Profile from the original machine you created the profile on to the machine you are moving it to. This means that you use the Export function on the original machine and the Import function on the new machine.

Transferring your user files to a new machine involves a few basic steps. You have to go through this process for each user that you want to move to the new machine. Use the following steps:

1. Choose Profile⇒Manage User Profiles from the DragonBar or say, “Manage User Profiles” on the original computer.

   A User Profile window opens up, showing the names of the User Profiles on your computer.

2. Select your username and click the Advanced button.

   A submenu displays.

3. Click the Export menu.

   A Windows browser screen opens and asks you to click on the location where you want to save the User Profile files you want to move.

4. If you are using a USB flash drive as recommended earlier, connect the drive to the computer, double-click Computer, and locate the drive.

   Make a new folder on the flash drive so you’ll have no trouble finding the files you transfer.

5. Click OK.

   The files are copied automatically to your flash drive. You should get a message that says the export was successful.

6. Close the User Profile window. Remove the flash drive and go back to the computer you are moving the profile to.
7. With NaturallySpeaking running on that computer, insert the flash drive.

   You see a message on the DragonBar that says No User Profile Is Loaded.

8. Choose Profile⇒Manage User Profiles on the DragonBar or say, “Manage User Profiles” on the new or alternate computer, and click the Advanced button.
9. Choose Import.

   The browser screen opens and asks you to select the username you just set up when you installed the software in Step 2.

10. Locate the USB drive and click on the file you copied onto it.
11. Click OK.

    The files are copied and you have successfully moved your User Profile from your original computer to your new computer.

The point of moving the old user files to the new machine is to avoid vocabulary retraining. You don’t want to train the new user files that the wizard sets up. Rather, you just want the file structure to be set up so that you can replace the wizard’s generic files with the files you copied from your old machine.

Because you already ran the New User Wizard when you installed NaturallySpeaking on the new machine, you don’t need to do it again. The next time you start NaturallySpeaking, it knows about the existence of your newly transferred user. What it hasn’t done is calibrate the audio system of this machine for your voice.

Open your new User Profile from the Open User dialog box that appears when NaturallySpeaking starts. (If you don’t see the Open User dialog box, it means that your new user is the only one NaturallySpeaking knows about, so it opened that user without asking.)

NaturallySpeaking realizes on its own that the audio setup hasn’t been run for this user. When it offers you the opportunity to run the microphone check, click Yes. For a more detailed look at the microphone check and the screens it presents, see Chapter 2.

Managing User Files

If you aren’t sure what users you have, you can find them listed in the Open User Profile dialog box, shown in Figure 19-1. If your copy of NaturallySpeaking has more than one user, the Open User Profile dialog box shows up spontaneously when you open NaturallySpeaking so that you can identify which user you are. You can also ask to see it by choosing Profile⇒Open User Profile from the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar.

When you look at the Open User Profile dialog box, you may be surprised to realize just how many users you have. Naturally, each person who uses NaturallySpeaking is a different user.

Deleting a user

User files take up space on your hard drive, so deleting user files that are no longer needed is good practice. Whatever your reason for wanting to delete a user, however, don’t do it rashly. All the backups for that user are deleted, too, so you can’t undo it. If you delete your girlfriend’s user files when you break up, she’ll have to retrain from scratch when you get back together. (She may get annoyed with you all over again.) Perform the following steps to delete a user:

1. Choose Profile⇒Manage User Profiles from the menu in the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar.

   The Manage User Profiles dialog box appears.

2. Select the name of the user you want to delete from the list in the dialog box.

   You can’t delete yourself. That is, you can’t delete the current user. Among other things, this safeguard prevents you from deleting the last user on the system. (If you want to do that, you should uninstall NaturallySpeaking.)

3. Click the Delete button in the Manage User Profiles dialog box.
4. When the confirmation box appears, click Yes.

Backing up and restoring User Profiles

NaturallySpeaking keeps a backup copy of each user’s speech files. It automatically makes this copy every fifth time you save NaturallySpeaking’s speech files — which most people do when they are prompted to as they exit NaturallySpeaking. (You can make this backup more or less frequent by using the Options dialog box discussed in Chapter 3. Or, go to Tools⇒Options⇒Data and change the setting to Automatically Back Up User Profile Every <xx> Saves.)

The backup speech files lag behind any changes you make by correcting or training NaturallySpeaking. So, if you make a mistake and save speech files when you shouldn’t have (perhaps you vocabulary-trained using the wrong documents), you can restore from an earlier version of those files.

You can tell NaturallySpeaking to update the backup copy at any time by choosing Manage User Profiles⇒Advanced⇒Backup. To restore from the backup copy, choose Profiles⇒Advanced⇒Restore. (The files are located in the folder where you installed NaturallySpeaking, in the Users folder there, in the folder that goes with your particular username.)