Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

I type fast. I was hoping to use this to allow me to take notes on the computer while I photograph items for sale. This is not possible, as so much of my speech is not recognized that I have to pay more attention to the computer and its little try again popups than what I am photographing. If I stare at the computer, and notice every time it gets something wrong, it works OK, but if Im staring at the computer anyway, I can can type WAY faster than it works. So, no go for me.

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...

I can type fairly well, but thought by having this I could save a little time. WRONG. First Ill say that I dictated reports for 20 plus years and never had an office assistant complain about my dictation. I understand the commands to use, talk clearly, into the mic. I also took the time to train Dragon, and edit its mistakes. I use the provided headset in a quiet office. It still couldnt understand what I believe are easy things: wood stove not would stove, light bulb not white ball, etc. In the end, it takes me so much time to go back, locate all the errors, correct them, and reproof that Im spending twice the time I did without Dragon. So....if you can type at all, youre better off typing. This is not a time saver. It does however provide some entertainment reading its mistakes. No, its not abandoned Raj, its a band in the garage.

Okay, for those of you who have not read my review of DragonDictate for 3 Mac, I originally bought that piece of garbage and then discovered this marvel of technology. I cannot say in mere words, how unbelievably effective this software is. Right now I am speaking to my computer, and having grown up in New York, speaking rather fast. Nevertheless, the software keeps up with me and so far has made not one mistake in the transcription of my voice. How cool is that? When you start with this product, you MUST learn how to dictate. Being kind of an old guy, and having worked with secretaries who actually took shorthand, this is not a problem for me. For you young people out there who have no experience in dictation, this might require some time to get used to. Once you figure out exactly how to dictate, speaking clearly, enunciating, and speaking in a normal manner-no ums or you know-your writing will fly. So far Ive had to make one small correction, a spacing error and just in the sentence, it thought I said a spacious error, but that was my fault because I mumbled. And it took a nano second to correct. I still havent mastered all of the hundreds of commands available to control cursor position, move around the page, open web apps, and I havent tried it with Microsoft Excel, but I have used it with Microsoft Word 2007 and it works brilliantly. I have also obviously used it here, directly in the Amazon text box, and again it is working perfectly. I think that once I have mastered the commands designed for controlling the computer I will almost never touch mouse or keyboard again. Let me stress, there is a learning curve. But it is not bad. For anyone who has a problem typing or using a mouse-carpal tunnel syndrome or anything else similar-or anyone who just wants to forget about typing, dont hesitate, buy this product. Just remember that the faster your computer is, the more RAM you have, the greater processing power you have, the faster this product will work. I am using it right now on in Acer V5-I5 with 8 GB of RAM and it is working very well. I tried it on a cheaper Lenovo - I 3 processor equipped machine and, although I really like the new Lenovo, it was too slow so I returned it and got this. If you dont mind using a desktop, I would suggest that you build your own with a quad core and a boatload of RAM. It would probably be overkill, but at least you could try your hand at some cool gaming. Im not sure how well this product would work as a game controller but wouldnt that be awesome. Finally, Im not a great proofreader, in fact I suck at proofreading. I also cant spell worth beans. Maybe you can find a lot of mistakes in this document, but I cant, and if I really wanted to be perfect, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 will read the document back to you, mistakes and all, and you could fix it as you go. Once again, dont hesitate its worth every single penny. Postscript: I forgot to mention that the software comes with a pretty good headset, at least its pretty good if you computer recognizes it. I tried it on my Mac using the crappy Mac version of this software and it worked very well, but when I tried it in my Acer, it didnt work at al. l I then tried a Logitech USB headset that I had laying around and that sucked too. Finally, I was lucky enough to have a very inexpensive headset by Cyber Acoustics, that I got from I dont know where, and it is working perfectly. Several other reviews that I have read say that the headset is critical. That is absolutely true, but the headset doesnt have to be expensive. That said, I am planning to get a good Bluetooth headset for this thing and if any of you out there who own the software could give me a recommendation or two I would appreciate it. My Mac Version of Dragon came with a Plantronics Callisto and it sucked. (By the way the software recognized and correctly typed both Plantronics and Callisto without hesitation. And from those of you from Texas-I just live here-it knows how to write yall.

I just purchased Dragon 12 and was trying to install it on my company provided computer. It wont install without .NET Frameworks 4.0. I contacted Nuance support which the confirmed, that Dragon 12 requires .NET Framework 4.0. This is not documented anywhere on the box, or online product requirements. Because my company IT policies are controlled and are not up to this version of .NET I cannot install Dragon 12. Of course I ran into this when I tried to install the software and had opened all the seals on the packaging, so just a straight return is not available. Im waiting for word from Nuance if I can return 12 for a version of Dragon 11.5 and if 11.5 will work on my older version of .NET Frameworks. Also to confirm other reviewers comments the headset provided is crap, and crushes your head. So if there is a package that is cheaper without headsets purchase it and buy a better headset separately.

Its a interesting and useful piece of technology, however every piece of technology has its flaws. The headset works well for the most part, however there are a notable amount of times where the speech isnt recognized. Had a couple problems with text to speech as well.

The instructions are to vague for someone as me who are older and do not have High-Tec, skills to follow complicated instructions. I would wish they could make things more simple. Dragon for dummies assumes you have knowledge on the product and go from there. I need step one, open the box and go from there. I am still trying to make it work, my fingers are old and stiff, and still much to do. Harley 77 years young

I am sure that people who receive emails would like to reply but dont want to take time to type it out so we let it fall into email garbage. Then again, you would like to just compose a letter to a friend or a complaint regarding a product but just dont want to take the time to type it out. I fell into these two categories even though Im a fast typist. A little over 15 years ago I purchased a word recognition software and found it to be useless as I spent more time going back and correcting errors. A majority of the time manufactures will spot their weaknesses and work to improve their product. I am super pleased in the improvement that Dragon has made in the word recognition field. It is not 100% perfect but darn close. The biggest factor in dictating is pronunciation and not slurring your words but then again it is proper to speak good English. I really like this product and I have no regrets in purchasing it. It is definitely a timesaver for me as I handle a fair amount of correspondence each week.

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.

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.