Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

Nothing like the advertisement claimed. Very difficult to use. couldnt get past the beginning set up. It did not recognize anything I said no matter how I did as instructed. I have had professional movie speaking parts, speak two languages with perfect accent, am gifted as a mimic. And I still could not get it to type anything as I read it. Tried to return it as dissatisfied with performance and it was returned as being opened. No s***! it is useless and a waste of money. Maybe in a few years after enough people throw their hard earned money at this s*** program it may become something. My experience was very bad!

This review written by dragon. I talk it types. Very handy. This allowed me to keep my previous user files so right off the bat it got the words right. I talk a lot of property legal descriptions and am amazed it gets them right almost all the time. It even types numbers when I want numbers and text numbers when I want them. So it is very contextual and smart. Also it continues to learn and incorporate your style over time so it gets better and better as you use it.

Why oh why do you have to buy headphones with this software? They didnt work well (at all) and the $40 set from Best Buy (which I had to get to use the software at all) worked fine. Drop the headphones and sell the software as a digital download. Good software, dumb packaging. That is why I removed 2 stars - very annoying user experience due to somebody being convinced that their users would be too dumb to get a decent set of headphones - solved by them getting bad headphones for everyone... opportunity knocks. :- )

I just bought Dragon for the first time, having waited until the s/w had been around long enough to hopefully work well, and the first day I was ecstatic as the recognition works very well with my plantronics Savi headset, but noticed serious apparent interactions esp Firefox acting badly and sloooowly, and lots of firefox and excel freezes (Office 2007), so looked to Amazon reviews to verify. Sadly it is the usual software story, great initial product becomes bloatware (usually after sale to larger company) as excess new versions are developed to milk users and maintain cash flow, and company wont fund a needed rewrite from scratch. This exact thing happened with ACT over a decade, great to horrible. I think the subscription model or SAAS is best as it does not encourage version pre-release to meet revenue deadlines. Ive tried switching browser to Chrome and IE, and the conflicts resulting in slow performance and freezes crept in. This is crapware, and Im still on the fence about whether the benefits (I love taking a break from typing) outweighs how badly my computer gets messed up. Im thinking Ill try using it for email twice a day, shutting it down and restarting right after.

I Like the product ...BUT...couldnt update the software from version 11.5 to 12. After many tries and many hours of frustration I contacted Nuances so called Technical Support to solve my problem. The support I received from one of their technicans was for me to troubleshoot it myself following their on-line Do it yourself trouble shooting links. This might have been OK for a computer wiz...BUT...I am not one. I spent 4 hours trying to fix using serveral different links but had no sucess. In frustration, I decided to keep using the software version I have and return the Premium 12 software to Amazon. I immediatly apprised Nuance of what I did and 2 days later I received the following message Since you already returned the solfware, we will not be able to continue to trouble shoot this error. In this case, we will close this incident The bottom line, if you plan to update and arent a computer wiz...DONT until Nuance implements a first class support agency with a live person directing you what to do on your computer screen or to take over your screen to troubleshoot and fix your problem.

I have dyslexia so when I type I miss words and invert characters. DNS is an answer but has flaws. It interferes with Excel 2003 Numbers Key Pad, it inserts periods randomly where grammatically they should be commas or starts new sentences without any rational. Even with these flaws job completion is still 2-3 times faster.

I have an infirmity in my hands and makes it difficult to type, so I badly needed assistance from my voice recognition software package. This package is working well, it couldnt be better. However it seems determined to add unwanted words. At present, it inserts the word for over and over and over again. The program does save me time, for but for needs considerable refinement . It also skips words. Using the program requires a great deal of time for editing.

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.

Got Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium 12 just the other day, arrived as ordered. I’m actually writing this review using it. Takes a little bit of practice to get used to talking to your computer as you need to make sure you articulate what you want to say although making corrections is pretty simple. Works a whole lot better if you don’t have a lot of noise in the background and if you have a quiet area like me it works very very well. I’m also surprised at how accurate the thing is… this is my first time using something like this ha ha. Thinking of getting another copy for my wife.

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.