As a professional writer, I work at the keyboard all day. If I'm not working on a novel, I write movie and book reviews for different online magazines. I'm very aware of how much damage repetitive motion can cause, and I've known a lot of my peers who've had serious problems: Excruciating pain followed by surgeries that didn't always fix everything.

About ten years ago, I had a cyst removed from my left wrist. At the time, it was causing a lot of pain and interfering with my writing. Since the surgery I've still had problems upon occasion when I work long days. The nerves of that hand are now basically rubbing across the bones and sometimes get inflamed.

During the recovery after the surgery, I used a program called Dragon Dictate to write by dictating the book verbally. That turned out to be an arduous undertaking and I wasn't really happy with the speed I was able to maintain or the accuracy of the software. The bottom line was that I typed faster with my hands than I could verbally. With less mistakes. Time, as they say, is money.

So I gave up on the idea of using speech recognition software.

A few weeks ago, cornered by deadlines and plagued by some of the old pain returning because of the long hours at the keyboard, I decided to try speech recognition software again.

Dragon Dictate doesn't seem to work very well on the new XP operating system. In fact I've even read that you weren't supposed to use Dragon Dictate with XP.

However, I found out that XP comes loaded with speech recognition software. I've tried it, but wasn't very happy with it. The accuracy wasn't very good and I got easily frustrated with the fit microphone, which was a good one.

A few more weeks went by and I happened to see the Logitech Notebook Headset on the shelf at the local Wal-Mart. The price tag wasn't exorbitant so I felt comfortable spending the money to try the system out.

Over the last few weeks I've been totally impressed with the headset. It hears everything very well and manages to negate extraneous ambient sound like the fan I keep in my office as well as television, radio, and kid noises throughout the rest of the house. That was something I hadn't been able to totally get away from all using the other software and headsets I've had.

Not only that, but it's comfortable enough to wear all day. A BIG plus because I always put in 8 to 10 hours at the keyboard throughout the day.

After working with the Logitech headset system, I've gotten to where I use it for all my email correspondence and reviews (like this one). Not only is it accurate and dependable, but with the nifty case that comes with it, it's extremely portable as well. I often work between two different computers, my desktop and the notebook computer I use, so it's important to have something I can transport safely and easily. This system does exactly that. And it comes with an adapter so I can use a USB port or the microphone/headset plugs if I need to.

As demanding as I am, as much as I depend on systems to function correctly, I'm not one to do cartwheels over product unless it's really good. The Logitech Notebook Headset is a great device. I recommend trying it. You may change the way and the way you feel about work.