Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 [Old Version]

I bought this for my wife to do her charting, shes a nurse. She has trouble writing because of a hand tremor. She is not able to type well either. She is not computer or tech savy one bit. She now does her work in 1/4 the time of writing by hand. I had to convert her forms with MS Word not a big deal. The software is very accurate and works best when she doesnt try too hard. Speaking naturally instead of one word at a time allows the software to take context into account. I even catch her sending long e-mails to friends now, something she NEVER did before. Dragon rocks!!!

The new version of Dragon - 11.5 Premium has major problems with Word Perfect v. X6. For instance, the correct that feature simply doesnt work. Ditto for certain other features. I have had it for a month, and talked to the Dragon folks shortly after it was installed. They said they were aware of this problem and would be releasing an update/fix. A month later nothing has been done. If you use Word Perfect, I would not buy this product until I could confirm that the problem has been fixed.

If Dragon Speak could handle my accent better, I would give it an 8 out of 10. Ive only had it a month and so we are both learning. It is easy to set up and to use but it seems to be a bit of a memory hog. Im running a 64 bit, Windows 7, 4G notebook and a Sound Blaster Headset. I primarily use it with Word, email and some online applications.

I have been using Dragon for 20 years. I would be without it – because I have had issues with carpal tunnel in both of my hands. I use it excessively for emails in Outlook, word documents and occasionally in Excel. It is wonderfully accurate – and the correction mechanisms are extremely good. I ordered this version because I have a Windows 7 PC – and this was the most compatible version that was made at the time. It works really well with outlook. The only issue that I have it occasionally hangs up. I then have to shut it down and start all over. But this has been an issue with Dragon since I first started using it many many years ago.

I ordered this for my medical practice. I had considered the Medical version which cost $1600 however the price was a little too much for my rural practice. So I decided to first try this product which was inexpensive. I ordered it and paid extra for one day delivery and that is what I got! It was easy to install on my computer and the voice recognition was fast. I was surprised that there was a selection for Southern users. Now this was a first for me. Usually when I try to speak my accent confuses the software and lots of nonsense is written on the page. I dictated a patients note in a few short minutes and that completed my charting. I was so pleased. Although this is not a medical format it managed my medical terminology well. I am so happy that I decided upon this product and saved $1500 to boot. I am just learning about this since I have only used it for less than one hour. So Dragon Naturally Speaking made a great first impression with me. This was a good investment for me. Just transcribing that one patient note saved me about 30-40 minutes. Very satisfied and happy with the purchase.

I write courses for Microsofts courseware library that center on SQL server Business Intelligence and SharePoint. The courses that I write target a sophisticated audience at least they are supposed to. This means they have technical jargon in them or geek speak complicating the task for any voice recognition software. I have recently started to use Dragon Naturally Speaking. This is the latest version, 11, the professional edition. I have tried earlier versions of Dragon in the hopes that it would increase my productivity and I have also tried built in voice recognition available in Windows 7. I did not find either the earlier versions of Dragon or voice recognition in Windows 7 to be of a high enough quality to be useful. However this latest version of Dragon is absolutely outstanding and I highly recommend it.There is no disclaimer here as I have in no way been compensated by Dragon though if they read this and want to change that Im open to negotiations!

I installed this today and after a few hours, tons of searching for a solution online, and plenty of messing with my computer settings, I am throwing the towel in. I continually get an error message that the Sound Level is Too Low and I cannot even get past the profile setup wizard due to this error. The headphones included with the software are either junk, or the software itself has an error with Windows 7. A user forum I was reading mentioned that if you call Nuance with this problem they will spend plenty of time making sure you checked all the obvious solutions, then they apologize and tell you they have a software glitch they are working on. I havent subjected myself to this process, and I dont plan on it, either. No product should require this much work just to get it to function adequately. Well, a glitch working with Windows 7 is a big deal. I am computer savvy, I can build a PC from parts, I can install software, I can change system settings in Control Panel, and I can troubleshoot simple problems better than most computer users. I checked every single listed solution I was able to try, and I simply cannot get this software to run properly. If this is a known bug, as it seems to be, then this product should not be sold as compliant with Windows 7. I am returning this, there is no way I plan on spending even more time and effort getting this to work. I checked the microphone function with the Windows Sound Recorder, and while it is a bit low, it records just fine. So, either the issue is the included headset (hopefully Nuance is not hair-brained enough to send out a faulty headset that will make their software look like garbage) -or- the problem is that their software is buggy and doesnt run properly on my new, clean, non-buggy computer.

This is one of the best and cheapest upgrades I have ever done in more than 15 years of Dragon and 5 upgrades of this program. I have used Dragon since Version 1.0, and most recently Dragon Pro Medical V10. I work with it daily at work. My work requires me to dictate into a Chrome based online program. Newer Chrome versions made Dragon 10 Medical repeatedly crash. Looking into upgrades, I found the newest version would force me to buy the expensive medical version to dictate into Practice Fusion, and possibly into other applications, while Version 11 would basically put my dictation where ever I put the cursor, and would utilize the power of my Intel i3 desktop. For such a low price, I decided to gamble and just buy V11 in the Premium. Upgrade forced a new install, which was no big deal, but I was unable to import my custom dictionary and the 50 or so voice macros I have set up over the years and I had to import the list and retrain those words, and redo macros from scratch. Overall, this tiny upgrade was a great improvement and I have had no instability and noticeable improvement in performance. I did the install on one of the three computers I use for dictation as a trial and after a month of daily use, have installed this version on the other machines (Windows 7 and Windows 8) with similarly good experience.

Bought Dragon to speed up the process of writing blogs, articles, and books. I find it does that, if I have put some thought into what I want to say, and how I will outline my thoughts ahead of time. If I just sit down to start talking and compose as I go, I end up having a fair amount of editing to do afterward. The software works well, catches most words accurately. If I were to spend a bit of time reading instructions, I would probably use more of the available functions and commands (like making headings, and using less common punctuation marks). Im a beginner but will continue to be a Dragon user and hope to become a superuser eventually.

When you buy software like this the obvious intention is to make your life a little easier and have things done a little quicker where time counts, time is money, is a reality. But if youre expecting to come right out of the gate running twice or three times as fast as you have been your expectations are too high. Like anything thats new, (new to me anyway), theres a learning period. Theres an X amount of time that it takes to learn how to use the software, and in this case, also for the software to learn how to respond to you. The incredible thing about Dragon Premium 11.5 is that it has a very fast learning curve. I can say this unequivocally because I owned and used Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 11.5 edition. That edition is considerably slower in learning and I can only surmise that Nuance simply didnt put as much software information into Dragon Naturally Speaking Home edition as they did in the Premium edition. So when you get Dragon Premium out-of-the-box and you set up your first profile pay particular attention to something called Words and Phrases and instructions about Vocabulary options because these things are very important in how fast Dragon is going to learn your style of writing and speaking. Because its all about time, (how much time you spend speaking into the microphone and allowing Dragon to listen & learn), when you get DNS Premium 11.5 going on your computer you actually can have it up to its 98% accuracy rate within three or four hours of dictation time! There are a number of things that you should know about Dragons way of doing things and the manual isnt always the best way to go on some of these operations. I suggest very strongly that you pay a visit to KnowBrainer.com and read a few of the posts regarding merging other vocabulary and profile options of previous DNS programs. If you had a previous version of DNS on your computer its not always best to carry the profile over and KnowBrainer.com is a true must in my opinion. The information that you can get is invaluable in forum of that website. As for DNS Premium 11.5, I strongly recommend this program to anyone whos looking for speech to text software but doesnt want to spend $500 or more on some of the higher-end offers out there. One more word of advice; I went through several headsets before I settled on one that works for me, (the one I got was Plantronics 995 USB wireless headset). Im not saying that it doesnt have its faults, (its pretty heavy, it encompasses the entire ear on both sides, and can get somewhat uncomfortable after a while), but what is important is that whatever headset you do get, make sure that you place your microphone near your nose or nostrils. The placement of the microphone near the nostrils is crucial because it permits your pronunciations to be less nasal like. Dragon instructs that you place the microphone 1 inch from your mouth, (the corner of your mouth), but I think thats just a generic placement and I found that to be not nearly as effective as placing it between my nose and my mouth closer to my nostrils. The headset/microphone that you choose will be very important and play a big part in the accuracy of your speech to text software. This is also true of digital recorders. I use the Sony ICD SX712 but there are better, if not more expensive, digital voice recorders out there. Recommendations that Nuance give for which digital recorders and headsets to use are not based on any real research at all. There is more info on that fact in Knowbrainer.com. If you go to KnowBrainer.com you will find a far more accurate breakdown of the best headsets and digital voice recorders to use for DNS Premium as well as KnowBrainer software. I do give DNS Premium 11.5 all five stars and I also want to give a big thumbs up to their Customer Support Techs. Not everyone has had great results with them or the software but I think a lot has to do with the little things that I touched on and for which I believe they may have overlooked. That and the lack of patience will likely give you a bad experience. Oh and by the way, I did this entire review with DNS Premium 11.5. I used the digital recorder for most of it and the transcription had 4 errors. Two were definitely due to my poor annunciation, and the other two were capitalization errors. And Ive only had Dragon Premium for about 2.5 weeks! Try it.