NCH Express Scribe is freely available to the public for commercial and residential use. I know many transcription companies and education systems use it. It works with most foot pedals as well. A good cheap foot pedal is the vPedal found at several online locations.
Transcription software is pretty easy to write. I have written several transcription programs in the past with ease.
For those of you who will ask, I do not work for NCH or any associated companies.
I haven't seen a benchmark from Apple or Microsoft for that matter that was truthful. I tend to look at non-OS sponsored benchmarks from companies who don't get paid to do the benchmark. If I want to purchase a PC, I don't rely on AMD or Intel's website to tell me which CPU is faster even though AMD shows Intel's CPUs as being faster in many areas.
Apple went out of their way to make their system run at optimal peek adding additional hard drives with raid and only showing the benchmarks that makes the Mac look good. If you go to http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ you will notice that in different benchmarks Apple doesn't show all the PC computers that were shown in previous benchmarks, only showing the PCs that were slower than the Mac.
As for benchmarks using Red Hat Linux, Red Had has been the most used flavor of Linux which looks good for Apple. But Red Hat deprecated that version of Linux about a year ago. Since then the newer versions of Linux running the newest kernel run between 20% and 60% faster on the same system depending on what you are doing.
As far as doing video rendering on the Mac with 14 hard drives using Raid, that alone can enhance the speed of a system by a lot, reducing the memory bottle neck of the hard drive. The "comparable" PC had only one hard drive running at 7200 RPMs.
The issue is not that one may be better than the other, but that Apple is fixing the race so they win.
According to http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ Apple as again, like microsoft, misrepresented the speed of the G5. Below is the small print of the benchmarks. Take note that Apple used "a single Xserve RAID configured with 512MB of RAM per controller, 14 drives and RAID 50" for their Mac configuration. I'm guessing 14 drives with RAID 50 is not the "standard" Mac configuration. Apple also uses different benchmark programs as well as video software for the benchmark. With that being the case, we still have no clue if the speed difference is a function of video software or hardware. Finally note the use of Red Hat Linux. It's nice to know that Apple had to use a 1-2 year old OS (with the old 2.4 kernel and who knows what software running in the background) to lower the speed enough to make their new CPU look good.
1. Testing conducted by Apple in May 2004 using preproduction dual 1.8GHz, 2GHz and 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 units; all other systems were shipping units.
2. Power Mac G5 systems were tested using Final Cut Pro HD and a single Xserve RAID configured with 512MB of RAM per controller, 14 drives and RAID 50. The HP xw8000 (Avid's recommended PC platform) is listed for comparison; results are available at www.avid.com.
3. Power Mac G5 systems were tested using Final Cut Pro HD. The HP xw8000 (Avid's recommended PC platform) was tested using Avid Media Composer Adrenaline 1.3.1. All systems were tested using the internal disk subsystem.
4. File size = 600MB. For PC systems, cache sizes were:Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2; Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor; Alienware Aurora = 1MB L2.
5. Content size = 659MB. For PC systems, cache sizes were: Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2; Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor; Alienware Aurora = 1MB L2.
6. All Power Mac systems were tested using Logic Pro 6.4.1. The Dell Dimension XPS, Dell Precision 650 and Alienware Aurora were tested using Steinberg Cubase SX 2.0.1. For PC systems, cache sizes were: Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2; Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor; Alienware Aurora = 1MB L2.
7. The Dell Dimension XPS and Dell Precision 650 ran HMMER on Red Hat Linux. For PC systems, cache sizes were: Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2, and Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor.
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NCH Express Scribe is freely available to the public for commercial and residential use. I know many transcription companies and education systems use it. It works with most foot pedals as well. A good cheap foot pedal is the vPedal found at several online locations. Transcription software is pretty easy to write. I have written several transcription programs in the past with ease. For those of you who will ask, I do not work for NCH or any associated companies.
I haven't seen a benchmark from Apple or Microsoft for that matter that was truthful. I tend to look at non-OS sponsored benchmarks from companies who don't get paid to do the benchmark. If I want to purchase a PC, I don't rely on AMD or Intel's website to tell me which CPU is faster even though AMD shows Intel's CPUs as being faster in many areas.
Apple went out of their way to make their system run at optimal peek adding additional hard drives with raid and only showing the benchmarks that makes the Mac look good. If you go to http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ you will notice that in different benchmarks Apple doesn't show all the PC computers that were shown in previous benchmarks, only showing the PCs that were slower than the Mac.
As for benchmarks using Red Hat Linux, Red Had has been the most used flavor of Linux which looks good for Apple. But Red Hat deprecated that version of Linux about a year ago. Since then the newer versions of Linux running the newest kernel run between 20% and 60% faster on the same system depending on what you are doing.
As far as doing video rendering on the Mac with 14 hard drives using Raid, that alone can enhance the speed of a system by a lot, reducing the memory bottle neck of the hard drive. The "comparable" PC had only one hard drive running at 7200 RPMs.
The issue is not that one may be better than the other, but that Apple is fixing the race so they win.
According to http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ Apple as again, like microsoft, misrepresented the speed of the G5. Below is the small print of the benchmarks. Take note that Apple used "a single Xserve RAID configured with 512MB of RAM per controller, 14 drives and RAID 50" for their Mac configuration. I'm guessing 14 drives with RAID 50 is not the "standard" Mac configuration. Apple also uses different benchmark programs as well as video software for the benchmark. With that being the case, we still have no clue if the speed difference is a function of video software or hardware. Finally note the use of Red Hat Linux. It's nice to know that Apple had to use a 1-2 year old OS (with the old 2.4 kernel and who knows what software running in the background) to lower the speed enough to make their new CPU look good.
1. Testing conducted by Apple in May 2004 using preproduction dual 1.8GHz, 2GHz and 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 units; all other systems were shipping units.
2. Power Mac G5 systems were tested using Final Cut Pro HD and a single Xserve RAID configured with 512MB of RAM per controller, 14 drives and RAID 50. The HP xw8000 (Avid's recommended PC platform) is listed for comparison; results are available at www.avid.com.
3. Power Mac G5 systems were tested using Final Cut Pro HD. The HP xw8000 (Avid's recommended PC platform) was tested using Avid Media Composer Adrenaline 1.3.1. All systems were tested using the internal disk subsystem.
4. File size = 600MB. For PC systems, cache sizes were:Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2; Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor; Alienware Aurora = 1MB L2.
5. Content size = 659MB. For PC systems, cache sizes were: Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2; Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor; Alienware Aurora = 1MB L2.
6. All Power Mac systems were tested using Logic Pro 6.4.1. The Dell Dimension XPS, Dell Precision 650 and Alienware Aurora were tested using Steinberg Cubase SX 2.0.1. For PC systems, cache sizes were: Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2; Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor; Alienware Aurora = 1MB L2.
7. The Dell Dimension XPS and Dell Precision 650 ran HMMER on Red Hat Linux. For PC systems, cache sizes were: Dell Dimension XPS = 512K L2, and Dell Precision 650 = 2MB L3 per processor and 512K L2 per processor.