Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

Ive been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking since version 3. Many people try this program and almost immediately stop using it. when I first began using it years ago I did the same thing. I would put it on my computer system, go through a lengthy training process to teach it how I speak. The training process teaches it how you pronounce different words and it used to take about an hour. While there is still a training period it now takes roughly 5 min. in the past even after training the program to recognize your voice through that hour-long process it would still make many mistakes. And like most people I just got frustrated and uninstalled it. If I gave this five stars you know there has to be a bright side coming. :-) One day, back in version 3, I decided I was going to use it no matter what. And Im glad I did. What frustrates people the most about using voice dictation software is that its not 100% correct all the time. Now a big however. However, when the program makes a mistake (and it holds true right up to the newest version) instead of getting frustrated all you have to do is correct the mistake. Teach the program what you wanted it to type as opposed to what it did. Once you do that it usually doesnt make the same mistake again. As an example, I have a medical condition called Ménières disease. I guarantee you the word Ménières is not in any standard dictionary that computer uses. So the very first time I was dictating a letter and said the word Ménières the computer typed the words many ears. Coincidently, Ménières disease does happen to be a problem with the inner ear but the term many ears isnt certainly what I was looking for. To correct the error went like this: say to the computer select many ears, then say spell that and a dialog box pops up and all you do is speak into the microphone and spell the word correctly. In my case it was to say cap m e n i e r e s, say the words click train and the computer automatically clicks a button labeled train and then you speak the word that you just spelled and it enters it into its dictionary. And it will then replace the incorrect spelling with the correct one automatically and you can continue dictating. When people read this in the manual that is usually what deters them from using the program. I like everyone else thought I was going to be spending all my time saying that entire paragraph to correct a word. Also like everyone else I thought I didnt have the time. The thing is, to actually perform the actions that I described in the previous paragraph actually takes less than 15 seconds and once you do but you dont have to do it ever again. I have created a website dedicated to information on Ménières disease so the term Ménières came up constantly. After the first time it made the mistake of spelling Ménières as many ears it never made the mistake again. Being a website dedicated to a rare medical condition I used the term Ménières probably 100 to 120 times. Like I said, after correcting it the first time it never made the mistake of misspelling Ménières again. In this review alone Ive used the word Ménières at least 6 to 8 times. This review is being dictated through Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you do see a mistake in any of the words in this review its due to my laziness, not the program. I say that because besides just speaking into a microphone and watching the words appear on screen you can even use the program in another way to check what youve written (or what its written). Both the premium and the home versions of this program have the ability to read what has been typed out loud. The only reason Im not doing it is because Im starting to run late for an appointment and lost track of time. So there isnt time to have it read the entire review back to me and listen for errors. But once more, if you read this back to me and there was an error all he would have to do is go back and correct it and it wouldnt happen again. When I started using this program it was for work purposes but I didnt think much of it when I stopped using it because I typed 111 words per minute accurately. What can I say, I did a lot of typing so my speed just naturally built up. Another however coming. However, now I have osteoarthritis and not only do I type very slowly but its very painful. Using NaturallySpeaking once I start the program I dont have to touch the keyboard. It even has an entire set of commands for several of the most common web browsers so you can use it to surf the Internet as well. And that is also in either the Home or Premium versions of this program. As of today (April 9, 2014) Amazon is selling the previous version (11) for an extremely reduced price. While I purchased the Premium 12 version for a few extra features I found I really dont use them so I went back and purchased two copies of version 11 (I have multiple computers). As THE final note, which ever version of the program you by, it also comes with a plug-in headset. I didnt feel like sitting a few feet from my computer – which is the length of the cable to the headset – so I simply purchased a wireless one for $20. But you do have everything you need to get started right out of the box. Would I recommend it? I own four copies… you guess…

I chose this item cause I HATE to type and thought this would be perfect in helping me get caught up with my work at the office. However I spent more time fixing the mistakes and getting frustrated when Dragon couldnt understand what I was saying that it now sits in its original box on a shelf. It sounded awesome and I bragged to everyone about ordering it. Now everyone is asking about Dragon and laughing when I say, if I took the time to learn it maybe it would be good but I dont have the time that is needed. Oh and I did not get it at the great sale prices it is currently selling for ....so yes I got duped hopefully by reading this you wont. Like I said if you have time to learn all its tricks Im sure it would be awesome but when one see online there are actual training classes for the software I should have known.....and I work in IT.

I received my Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium 12 a week ago and struggled with it at first. To make a long story short, the whole problem was the microphone on the headset that was included with the software. Since I purchased a better microphone, I have had absolutely no problems at all using Dragon. My advice to anyone who is having trouble with the software is to try it first with a better microphone before you give up. The software seems to be an excellent product. Nuance Communications would be better off sending no microphone then sending a lousy one, which makes people think that the software is impossible or difficult to use.

So far its working really well. Granted I cannot compare it to anything else or earlier versions because I have never used any of them. As for me I have dyslexia and have become self-conscious of my ability to spell anything over the years.(Constantly using spell check or Google when spell check doesnt work in order to find definitions of a word) needless to say it has made it hard to function in a world filled with emails and Twitter accounts, or at least more time-consuming. Personally would not recommend a speech recognition program for a high school student or a child in grade school. (with a learning disability or no). For learning how to spell and type not to mention grammar is so important in this day and age.that I fear a speech recognition program would hinder their ability to do both in the long run. For there will be times when they will not have access to a speech recognition program or will have to communicate with pencil and paper.

I know exactly what your thinking, your saying to yourself, this is the only thing on the market, and dragon has been around for years, and your also thinking, by now-dragon must have perfected this?!? Read on my beloved friends. DRAGON 3 for MAC brand new out of the box, is a nightmare. How its possible that everything failed, either within an hour or after 20 minutes use. is beyond me, but everything failed, and epically. The software failed, the headset failed and customer support is the worst experience of my life. ****Seriously people, if your on heart medication or stress medication, please please read this review, and stay away from this product. I don’t want to see anyone have a heart attack or sesure from the aggravation. Trust me, Im talking from the heart-the reason Im spending the time here to write out every detail is because I care about the horror your about to go through… Theres really not much to say about the headset because they failed completely and utterly and miserably. It actually blew my mind but to give a little bit more detail about that, what happened was for the first few minutes of usage, I was getting a crackling static noise. Then that noise became more continuous. Yeah lots of fun. And you know it never really did resolve itself. And now, lets move on to customer support. Customer support is, yep you guessed it, ****contracted out to save money, overseas.***** They do not understand english very well and have little training, but the worst part about the horrendous customer support is they interrupt you every time you try to speak, and get this-they start yelling at you, or they’ll get aggravated at you and pause and not say anything or they’l just get an attitude, -its so bad that I took the time out to record these people so as to send the recording to corporate to get them fired… May god strike me down if Im lying…. But thats just the beginning of the nightmare of customer support-finding the right number takes hours, and once again, your talking to people in indonesia, who for some reason, and it must be something to do with the culture and language differences,every time you try to talk, they start talking over you... I still can’t believe it, but it gets worse, every time I called I was, 6th on the line, so waiting was an average of an hour, yep, lots of fun-but wait its gets interestingly worse, And I say interestingly because youre not going to believe what they do to avoid helping you once you wait an hour on the phone. You’re going to love this one... So here you are, after waiting one hour on the phone, a machine comes on the line and says, “ you are the next caller” then after a few minutes, and you know right away that the help center has you on the line because the music stops-there is a 10 to 15 second pause… Just dead air, so Im like hello??? hello??? more dead air, I say hello??? more dead air- I honestly think its a technique the customer support uses to get the caller to hang up. It seems like they don’t want to do their job, so they must know that if they don’t say anything-they can avoid helping you-and get paid for doing nothing ,meanwhile they havent done anything that incriminates them- But wait it get worse-after 15 seconds of dead air-the guy says, in a very miserable kind of like, I really don’t want to help you voice-hello. So Im like hey hello!!! then , I think you guessed it by now-the guy strategically pauses for another 10 seconds, hoping that on the second try-you’ll get so frustrated that you hang up…. I remember I was in bed lying down speaking very calmly, because you know, this is important to me, so I figured if I was calm they would help me better, and nope. I kept getting the same guy, and like I was saying, I was trying to be calm, and long stoy short, this guy aggravated me so badly, that as I was lying down, I turned my neck maybe not even a half of an inch, and threw my upper right back out-form the stress he caused…so for days it felt like there was a knife stuck in my upper back, I can’t make this stuff up people…. the soft ware once I finally loaded it onto my brand new state of the art MacBook Pro top of the line 8 gigabyte 256 flash hard drive”for those who aren’t aware, this is the best most expensive and latest machine on the market, failed multiple times, I was getting the infamous multi colored spinning circle. So I reinstalled and- same thing. I had my best friend who is all about macs look at it and he said its definitely not the lap top-it s the soft ware, which I already knew but you know, I wanted to make sure and he is a MAC guy, and he verified that its the soft ware-he got aggravated and could not believe how bad DRAGON 3 for MAC is... yeah I really dont know what to say anymore except dont bang your head against the wall if you do youll have no more brains left.. Ive already lost mine A long long time ago in a place far far away. PS so while my friends was trying to help me, he mentioned that my MacBook Pro comes with a voice recognition system and that I should try it and yeah, you guessed it, low and behold, I tried it and it works good, not great but good, good enough for me to be happy. So then I was like, well thats a kick in the ass and I thought maybe if I also incorporate a good headset into my MacBook Pro thatll help. So I did my research and I went and got the black wire C7 20 made by plantronics and I have to admit its working very very well and yes thats what Im writing this review with. Long story short people youve got to keep trying anything and everything and if you can, get anybody or everybody to try to help you. I I succeeded in my goal- but Dragon 3 from Mac, is an epic failure...

When I first installed the software, there were a couple of significant glitches that upon searching the internet, were common and should not have still existed. Further, Nuance replied that my installation question, might require a fee to answer, which is a poor customer service response. Ultimately, they supplied a solution, without charge, which took two days. Then, I ran into a compatibility problem with Word 2010, which I also found was a regular problem on the internet, also took two days to get customer service response. Overall, I very much like the product, with one ongoing glitch. The dictation box, on a somewhat regular basis does not transfer to the intended application, like open word document and the dictation is loss. I find, to be comfortable, you must transfer one sentence at a time to document, so as to not lose your work. This needs to be fixed. You must insure that you place the cursor in the document, prior to dictating, but then it still happens on a regular basis.

I bought this to help my daughter write papers for school. She spent over an hour programming her voice into the software and when she began using it, it couldnt follow her voice accurately. She is in the 7th grade and her vocabulary is not sophisticated. When she spoke into the software it would type about every third or forth word incorrectly, requiring her to go back and manually edit the text. Once the editing was finished she had lost her train of thought and had to go back and try to recall where she was in her writing. By the time she got through the first two paragraphs (175 words = 45 minutes) her writing was incomplete and far below her ability. I am going to post the software on Craigslist where I will be competing with many other dissatisfied customers selling theirs.

Installed Dragon after using it several year ago. I never really got the hang of version 10, but took the time to learn this version and it seems to be a little easier. I do a lot of writing for my business, and this program makes long documents go smoother, at least to get the ideas on the page. I have not yet mastered it and find myself making the final edits by hand, but its a great program. NOTE - this version will NOT WORK with Medical Records; there is a special Dragon for medical records.

I have had Dragon 8, 9 and 10. I was wondering if the program is going to be worth the money or whether I should use the Microsoft speech recognition software. (which I checked out) The improvement in the functioning from those past programs versions is great. I recommend the program. I give it four stars because I still think its $30-$50 too expensive.

Upgrading my review to three stars. I had to uninstall then reinstall the program. Now it seems to work. It is a bit slow on my OS (vista 64-bit with 1.8 GHz). Maybe it is better on a different OS with a faster processor? Accuracy out of the box seems pretty good, but I havent used it that much yet.