As I said in yesterday’s blog, to use dictation with any of the various Microsoft Word offerings, you must be connected to the internet. Friday night I became aware that we have been running at the slowest speed Spectrum Internet offered, which very well may have been the problem with my narration all along, not any of the computers or microphones I have been using.
When I did a speed test Saturday night, I was showing 33.79 mbps download and 4.21 upload speeds. After talking to a Spectrum rep online Saturday, yesterday I called Customer Support and upgraded our service. Since we had a five year old bundled package, this required losing a couple of channels we never watched anyway, getting a couple of new channels that we probably won’t watch either, but increasing our speed from 25 mbps to 200 mbps. It was a price increase of about $20 per month, but well worth it if it does the job. Especially considering how much money I’ve already spent on microphones, computers, and antacids because I was going crazy at the slow speeds I was getting while narrating.
The Spectrum rep said we could continue to use our existing modem and to give it about fifteen minutes for everything to kick in. I waited, and when I went back in, I was amazed at the difference in speed. 236.08 mbps download and 11.71 upload! What a difference!
I saw it almost immediately when I started dictating today’s blog in Microsoft Word. No lag time at all, and the thing was flying as fast as I could talk. If it stays this way, I will be a very happy camper! I have called Spectrum several times to complain about the slow Internet browsing speeds we were getting anyhow, not aware this was part of my problem with the dictation, but nobody ever mentioned an upgrade to me. I wonder why not?
To clarify something from yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that when using Microsoft Word, it was defaulting to OneDrive in the cloud. I always turn that off because I want to know where my files are and not depend on something someone else controls. I got a virus years ago that wiped out three years of work and I never want to experience that again, so I’m fanatical about backing things up.
Besides the computer’s hard drive, I also back up everything to an external hard drive, and then I have two USB drives plugged in at all times that I can turn on or off with a push of a button, and I back up to them individually. While I am working on a book, I periodically save to all of those different drives during the day and again at the end of the day. And once a month I back up to yet another external hard drive, which I keep in my fireproof gun safe. One way or the other, come hell or high water, I’m going to be able to retrieve my work if something happens!
Congratulations Beckie Dobbins, winner of our drawing for an autographed copy of The Oil Conspiracy by W.R. Hill. We had 72 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.
Thought For The Day – I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure. It is in trying to please everybody.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
I carry a flash drive in my pocket in case anything happens to my computer at home when I’m not there. And we keep a larger drive in the car that doesn’t get backed up as often. I also back up my phone and tablet to my laptop. I was sure glad to have that last one when my tablet’s video card died so everything needed to be loaded onto a new tablet.
I’m glad you were able to speed things up and resolve some of your dictation issues.
I was thinking about the fireproof gun safe and it is possible for high heat to destroy a memory device even though it doesn’t catch fire. Maybe you can have one off-site backup at you neighbor’s place across the street.
As a photographer I have similar issues and I have keep a copy in my coach with the main storage in my house.
Just a thought.
Have a great day.
Gene
I’m glad to learn of the improvement. Does this mean that we will be seeing more throughput in the writing department? More new books per year? 😉
Four or five books a year aren’t enough, Bob? When will I sleep? More importantly, when will I eat? 🙂