Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

I only give three starts because, while i thought it was a good product, it did not serve me well for that i needed it to do. It would probably be better served to do memos, writing a novel however, is beyond its capability. I spend twice as much time proof reading and correcting errors as i did manually. I gave it three starts only because it is awesome concept that works on some levels. just not where i needed it to work.

I have used Dragon for a couple of years for dictation at work and find that it can greatly reduce my paperwork time. I bought the new version because my old one was becoming glitchy and I could not find the cd to reload the program. The only complaint that I have is that it does not work that well with my interface at work (EPIC) and so I will sometimes dictate it on Word and cut/paste the note into EPIC. Training can still be a hassle and when I am tired or sick I have more errors.

If you skip all of the promotional and advertising copy and search the very fine print (it should be more prominently displayed), you will find out that Dragon Naturally Speaking v.12 is not compatible with electronic medical records (EMR). Nuance wants to force those in healthcare to pay up to $2000 for the so-called medical version. If you purchase Dragon v.12 and try to use it with an EMR, the Dragon program will eventually detect that you are using an EMR and will cease working. This is a deliberate incompatibility that was engineered into the program. Nuance designed Dragon to actively look for an EMR, and to disable the Dragon program if an EMR is detected. This is discrimination, pure and simple. It also raises the question of whether the Dragon program violates the privacy of the owner of the computer on which it has been installed. I believe that this policy of crippling the software will end up hurting Nuance in the long run. If so, the company would deserve it.

I dictated an email message after the 15 minute initial training set up and it did about 90% accuracy or more. I was flat amazed. I dont dictate as well as I speak especially when Im reading the words I am dictating. If I did additional training it would produce much better accuracy. Im waiting for a version which automatically inserts punctuation and corrects grammar. This software is so advanced, Im predicting that day will be here soon. I use Logitech wireless H800 headsets as recommended in the list of qualified headsets. I have noisy fans, but the noise cancellation of the H800 eliminates the background noise. I have an IVY Bridge 3770K CPU with 8 GB of RAM. Im sure that helps a lot, too.

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 found the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software easy to use. But it takes much patience to wait for it to type. You have to speak slowly so that it understands you. I feel like I can type much faster than the speed at which they system types. I use it when my carpal tunnel gets to be too painful. It is a good program to fall back on when my hands become too tire. I have to learn to be more patient with the slower speed at which the softwaret types.

I chose Dragon because I do a lot of emails, facebooking and I am writing a book. I am a horrible speller, and you dont have to worry about that with Dragon. It is very fast and easy to install and learn. I have tried to talk faster than it can write, I havent been able to do it yet. When I say a wrong word, it will anticipate what I wanted to say and give me the correct options. It is worth every penny. Im just sorry I didnt find out about earlier.

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 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.

After a lot of research, this seems to be the best thing out there for the price. It was hard to get started and not simple to use. Took quite a while to get used to it. But it does work and it beats writing down every word. The users manual could be improved on.