Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

First: Im a professional writer. My issues may not be all that critical to people who are simply playing with this software. But for me they matter quite a bit. I bought this software recently. I got it to run just fine, and it seemed to handle its core function (voice recognition) well, after fairly extensive training (initial accuracy was truly awful, but it did get much better). However, I do not recommend this product for any serious business-critical use. Its just a toy, and the company treats it as such. Issues I ran into (the last mentioned is the worst by far, IMHO): * The included word processor crashes fairly often, and there is no auto-save feature. * The companys claims to the contrary, voice commands are flaky/unreliable/unresponsive in all other applications, including their dictation box. * The default spaces before & after punctuation are simply incorrect. I fixed these issues as they came up, but it was odd. * The software has lots of commands involving the word paragraph--but to Dragon, paragraphs are *always* followed by two carriage returns. This is fine for email, but for anything else I have to either (1) give up on using a bunch of commands, or (2) delete extraneous spaces throughout my documents. * All quotation marks, to Dragon, are straight. I fixed this for some commands, but I cant fix it for all of them, especially the most useful (quote that). This includes *all* apostrophes within words. This means I have to do some sort of post-processing on all documents intended for professional publication. * Capitalization of text after quotation marks (such as in dialogue) is iffy. Its right...sometimes. This means more effort goes into proofreading, and although Ive figured out the situations in which it does and doesnt work, its not something I can afford to stop and think about while Im writing. Since Im also a software guy, I could probably write an app to fix it, but come on. Really? * Copy/paste from their word processor does not seem to transfer any formatting (bullet points, etc.) without making it ugly/messy/useless. So I have to do all of that in some other program. Thus Dragon is only, as far as I can see, a slow plain-text machine. That crashes and loses work. * Customer support is interested ONLY in closing tickets, as far as I can see. My basis for this last claim: I sent them some questions (mostly involving the issues above) via their support system. I received an apparently automated response telling me theyd respond within 48 business hours, whatever that means. (A week and a day, maybe?) I then received an obvious stock message asking me whether I was using a desktop or a laptop, asking what sort of microphone I was using, requiring me to try dictation via various methods, etc. None of it was at all relevant to my questions, as Id flat told em the voice recognition part itself was working fairly well. Their message then went on to say that theyd consider the issue closed if I didnt respond within 14 days. I responded, pointing out that nothing in their stock message was relevant and also that their guaranteed response time, already unclear as to meaning, apparently applied only to their initial auto-responder, as there was no further guarantee mentioned. I asked when someone would actually read the email I had sent. I asked why they thought this sort of treatment would endear them to customers. Four days later, their system (or perhaps an employee) responded, giving a name intended to convince me it was sent by a separate person...with precisely the same stock message. None of my actual questions or points were so much as acknowledged. As a toy, this thing is okay. I might even be able to use it as a plain-text device--what I have to do is a quick automated edit (yeah, I wrote a quick program for this), then send the plain-text I get from that via a keyboard simulator that types my text into Scrivener, which then fixes the straight-quote issues. Cumbersome, to say the least. And I do ALL of my dictation via a remote microphone, so software crashes wont cause me to lose my work...except for the edits and corrections I have to make to each transcribed recording, and I try to save those regularly as I go. But if I can, Ill get a refund from either the company or Amazon. I dont believe a company that treats its customers so dismissively should be successful, and I dont want to help pay for their existence.

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.

All the advertising and videos in this made it seem like this was a easy to use, user-friendly product. Its not overly technical, but its not as easy as they make it seem. Also, so far it has been terribly inefficient and inaccurate. I bought this product with the hope of improving my efficiency. However it seems a lot of work is needed upfront to get this working, and at the moment its time I dont have. So it is currently sitting in the box. Waste of money.

Having tried this a couple times since the very beginning lets say its came along ways!! A good product that has many options and does pretty well. If compared to other software over years I would say this is at the teenage stage and maturing toward adulthood :-) In a few more years it will be normal stuff!!!

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.

When I received it, I experienced about 3 hours of high frustration because the included headset almost worked, but the volume of the speech was low even with max sensitivity computer setting. I went ahead anyway and the product worked very poorly - it took about 15 seconds to transcribe even a short phrase. Finally it dumped me out of the tutorial with some error message like it really could not understand what I said. I was about ready to toss it, but decided to try another headset. I tried the inexpensive Koss headset that Amazon had suggested as a bundle with the Dragon 12. Suddenly it started to work great.

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.

I love this. It is a huge revelation. I couldnt type due to a serious arm injury so got this w a feeling of desperation. I was able to compose a huge NIH grant (P50) using this software and a mouse w my good hand. I did not use the voice commands or ability to control the cursor or menus. It is not without bugs, Ive had a few crashes (but it recovers well), and of course it makes some errors, but I now oscillate between typing short things and dictating longer ones. This feels like the future. I would like to see cloud based storage of my user profile and some other glitches worked out, but this technology has already come of age and it will kill they keyboard in the next decade. In the near future keyboards will look like dot matrix printers or fax machines.

easy to set up, though there is still a bit of hesitation in the program it will suffice for the work I want to use it in (College term papers) these guys are by far the leaders in voice recognition and it shows in their expertise. Though I gave it a 4 star rating it really is not the proper rating as it should be a 4.5 rating. I anticipate that as time goes on this will learn my speech patterns better and it will be one of the best tools I have for my education, and writing e-mails, and other things. Overall a great system.

Really need to continue to utilize and better understand the process. Was dissapointed that the training cd did not come with it. I see where I have to pay an additional $25. However, look forward to using it. My expectations may be a little high as I am trying to work it with a writing program and have not yet succeeded.