Dragon speech system requirements

[PaulM]

Quick question, if I'm in the wrong place and you can suggest where else to go then please shout!

I have a partially disabled son and am looking to buy him a laptop to use at school. His occupational Therapist has suggested Dragon speech recognition, amongst other things.

I am weighing up pros and cons of different laptops and processor speed is a big factor as machine will run Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software, which I understand is very demanding.

I can get an HP machine with Intel i3-350M (2.26GHz) & 3 MB ram (spec from therapist), but for a little more cash I could get a HP Touchsmart TM2, which has a touch screen that I know Will would find really good as well for a little more. That however has a processor Pentium U5400 1.2Ghz & 3Mb ram.

Pros for son will be touchscreen (very useful) vs. Dragon (again very useful)

Will Dragon run OK on the Touchsmart TM2, if not, at what point in the processor speed chart would you suggest I look to keep over?

Again, really sorry if wrong place, but I'm struggling here, Dragon have been useless...

Thanks
Paul

[David (PassMark)]

The minimum specs from the software vendor are,

• CPU: minimum 1 GHz IntelŪ PentiumŪ or equivalent AMD processor or 1.66 GHz IntelŪ AtomŪ processor. We recommend 1.8 GHz Intel Dual Core or equivalent AMD processor. (IMPORTANT: SSE2 instruction set required)
• Processor Cache: minimum 512 KB. We recommend 2 MB.

The i3-350M is fine. You shouldn't have any problem. The U5400 is a much slower CPU than the i3-350M. It meets the minimum requirements, but doesn't really meet their recommended requirements. Both CPUs meet the SSE requirement and the cache size requirement.

Also try out any touch screen before you purchase. Some of the Window's touch screen solutions I have seen aren't very good. They aren't very smooth & lag.

[PaulM]

Thanks

Thanks for the help, I'll drop the Touchscreen and run with the better pc to run DNS. Shame we can't but the TM2 with the faster processor that is available in the US.
Thanks
Paul