YooHoo!! Here I am. All of these gave you some great advice. Is it in a specific field or just general dictation, i.e. letters, notes, etc.? If it is in a specific field, i.e. medical (then subfields-cardiovascular, internal medicine, surgical, etc.), the terminology is going to be more of a challenge than the actual transcription. Over the years of my professional career of surgical/medical transcription (over 30), technology has come a looonnnggg way. The smaller companies probably still use hand-held dictation systems that you transcribe from a desk-top transcription unit. The larger companies probably use the system Dafy described. The last couple of years I worked, I was able to plug headphones and foot control into my laptop or desktop computer and transcribe directly from the hospital server and then upload the permanent record into the patient's hospital record. I have even transcribed via wireless internet riding down the interstate on 'vacation' at 75 miles an hour. LOL!! Even though you won't be able to back up the voice, for some practice, type what people are saying on the television. This will give you a variety of terminology, voices, speeds, etc. If you have more specifics, feel free to email me and I'll help you as much as I can. Good luck!!

I use a landscaping program and Excel, both. I use Excel for the information-heavy stuff and the landscaping program for visual planning. I'm a bit of a compulsive planner (ok, it's probably a clinical condition, I'm such a compulsive planner . . . my husband asked me if I like the planning better or the gardening), so the landscaping program lets me play around with what looks good where, without actually having to rip plants up all the time. Of course, it has a fairly limited selection of plants, although you can add more, and I have. It's very time-consuming to add new plants. For my purposes, I mostly just use something that looks vaguely similar, and then rename it so I can recognize it later. I'm hoping this will come in handy for locating varieties of daylilies, hostas, irises, and such in the future, when the tags inevitably go missing. In line with the compulsive planning thing, I made a database from a chart in one of my books. I should probably sell it to the publisher, they could include it on a CD with the book. It took me many hours to make, but now if I want to find, say, a plant hardy to zone 2 that's over 4 feet tall, likes full sun, and has pink flowers, I can do that. It was worth every hour, I feel so satisfied when I use it. That and my veggie planner that tells me when to start seed, my earliest possible planting date, and my latest possible planting date (among many other things) are my favorite worksheets in Excel. I could go on and on (oh, wait, I already did), but I think you probably get the idea. I did look a little bit for a more sophisticated program, but Excel is so versatile that it's hard to beat. As for photo-shopping out the weeds, that's a fantastic idea! I'll never have to pull a weed again, right?

If you have one of these machines, could you please tell me how you like it. Was it easy or difficult to learn, easy to download patterns from the net? Did you buy the 4D software and how did you like it? Have you used any of the quilting stitches? Anything you can tell me will help. Thanks, Dee

We are a mixed household. I use a cast off Mac and a cast off desktop PC. I have recipes on both computers, but the MAC lives in my kitchen. I have a Recipe Zaar membership and transfer recipes from GW to my private cookbook. The online availability is nice for any computer I use and won't get lost in a hard drive crash. I like being able to access recipes from my parents kitchen, too. Looking at the demo page on the Yummy Soup website there is an online library. Would that work for both computers or is it just MAC?