Initially, I tried the one-handed hunt-and-peck typing approach.  Even though my typing skills on a good day are only "fair", the reduction in productivity was very significant. If you have ever tried to press the Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys simultaneously with one hand, you can understand my predicament.  Obviously, the one-handed approach was not going to work.

The first thing I did was to search the Internet for the latest in voice recognition technology. Surprisingly, Microsoft Vista's built-in voice recognition capabilities were very highly rated. So, I enabled these features and went through the training process to teach Vista how I talk. Training went great, but when I exited training mode to use the features for real, it immediately locked up my computer.

The second attempt at using voice recognition was to purchase the Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software from Nuance. I had used Dragon years before but found it too training-intense, slow, and inaccurate. Dragon version 10 was a huge improvement. It took approximately 30 minutes to go through the training routine and I used a Dragon feature that analyzed my Microsoft Outlook sent items and Word documents to build a dictionary of words that I typically used.

Another thing I did this go around with Dragon that I had not done years ago was to research the best type of microphone to use with speech recognition software.  The consensus seems to be that the corded Sennheiser ME3 microphone combined with a high-quality USB digital audio adapter gives the best results. A close second to the Sennheiser microphone is the Plantronics CS55 wireless headset. I already owned the Plantronics headset but purchased Sennheiser because of its high recommendation. I've found that the Plantronics works better than the Sennheiser and is cordless as well.

The bottom line is that the speech recognition software solutions have improved significantly in the last five years. For those of us in the profession who are "typing challenged", this category of software can significantly improve our productivity.  The investment in training time is very reasonable and is easy to do. I would bet that the Windows 7 native capabilities are going to be excellent. However, since you still need to invest in a high-quality microphone, the additional expense of buying a dedicated speech recognition software application such as Dragon Naturally Speaking will add less than $150 to the cost of getting started with this tool.

The speech recognition software works great when I can dictate (like this article, for example) but is not feasible for note taking during a client meeting or a phone conversation. To get around this, I investigated hand writing recognition software.  The tool I chose was the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen (my wife saw it on Oprah).  This application consists of a ballpoint pen with built-in audio recording capability that is used to write on a special notepad. The handwritten information is then transferred to the computer via a USB interface. Depending on the settings, the system will "translate" the written information to text that can be used in  Word or other applications.

In use, the translation capabilities were less than successful. I found that my poor penmanship made it difficult to get acceptable results. The importing of handwritten notes as a PDF document worked very well, but did not fit my note-taking style of jotting down comments in Word and then rearranging and adding to them after the meeting. The Pulse Smartpen recording capability does have some good benefits though. I use it in meetings with clients and after the meeting, I can very quickly review the discussion for additional points to add to my notes.

My final take on this hand writing recognition tool is that it will take a substantial amount of retraining to use it as an effective meeting recording tool. I do not think I'll have the patience to train myself to write differently in order to take advantage of the hand writing to text capability but I think the recording capability will be valuable and makes the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen’s $200 purchase price acceptable.

Now at the end of November, I still haven't answered the question of how many CPAs it takes to change a light bulb but my hand is out of the splint, and I’m more productive because of my use of voice and handwriting recognition software tools. So there is a silver lining in every dark cloud.