Nuance Dragon Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 (Old Version)

Easy to use! A must have if you are writing a book! I also believe it would be a great benefit for those in college. I sure would have been grateful if I would have had one in school. I also bought the book that explains more about it, however I didnt even need the book. I am more of one of those hands on kind of learners. Biggest problem I found was, you need a very good microphone, I got a Koss that works like a charm. The book I read weeks later is very good as well, learned a few tricks. It is called The Writers Guide To Training Your Dragon. Covers everything you have to know and some. I thought I would have a hard time, being it was years ago since I was in school. Lol Found myself patting myself on my back. I kinda laughed out loud and said to myself, either this is really easy or Ive gotten really smart in my old age! Thanks ever so much Amazon for Ive gotten my writing skills back to my friends, and its much easier than writing in a notebooks for my books.

I bought this for a computer that was running windows 7 or 8 and had to upgrade to windows 10 when I bought a new computer about 1 year later. I was told by tech support, that I have to buy a new version of dragon to get it to work the same as it did on the old computer.

I use it to dictate all my notes for clinicals and I have about 20 to 30 notes to put in on each patient. At the end of the day my fingers are falling off! They helped saved me from getting finger cramps. Its a little annoying at first but I use a lot of medical terminology but it learns as it goes. I had to correct it a couple of times and now it picks up on most of the words. I really enjoy it. Still trying to get the hang of the other functionalities involved but I mainly use it to type for me.

So many ways to dislike this software. First of all, it took over an hour to install; but I guess I should feel lucky as, when I read the experiences of others, many were not able to install it at all. Next, setting up the microphone was a challenge. The software came with a new headset/microphone combo so when setting it up with the software, there was an option for Dragon Remote Microphone or something like that. There was no explanation that that option pertains to an Android app which allows your tablet to act as a microphone, consequently I wasted a lot of time and finally found the answer to that problem by Googling it several times. Tried setting it up for my wife who is vision-challenged, thus her display is set to high-contrast. This resulted in some of the setup dialog boxes being invisible. Wouldnt you think that this software is likely to be used by someone with vision problems and design it to work with high contrast displays? Anyway, once we figured that out, the next challenge one faces is that of having to read documents of 5000 words, yes FIVE THOUSAND WORDS, or so to train it. The Microsoft speech recognition software that comes with Windows allows you to train it as you go, reading as much or as little at a time as you desire, a much more user-friendly way to go. Also maddening is the fact that there are dead links within the Dragon software. For example, in the training texts, a link appears above stating something like Click here to learn how to improve visibility of the text. Guess what? You click the link and absolutely nothing happens. I always thought the Microsoft Speech Recognition software was pretty good but my wife insisted she wanted to try Dragon as she had heard so many good things about it. I set up a profile for myself and trained it; so far I havent found anything it could do that the Microsoft software couldnt do as well, so I would just as soon have saved the 50 bucks or so that I spent on Dragon Naturally Speaking as a gift for my wife.

When I purchased Dragon I was a little pessimistic in the accuracy of the softwares abilities, but I can honestly say that 97% of my speech, at least, is faithfully transcribed into text. I needed this product because I injured my hands and cant type, and it has been a godsend. There are a few problems though. There is a little avatar that hovers around your text, and for me it constantly looks like its loading, trying to recognize speech, even when Im silently thinking. Also, sometimes when I turn it off and on again it doesnt work and I have to restart the whole program. Still, Im pretty amazed at the technology and thankful that I can write stories again.

I have dyslexia--not the kind where you have trouble reading, though. I have enormous trouble typing, and get the letters mixed around with as many as 3 to 7 typos per sentence. This meant I was a dismally slow typist. Worse, I am a writer and editor. When writing I would lose the flow of what I wanted to say when I went back to fix each sentence. Well, no longer. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 has changed my life. I used to get 1,000 words on a good 8-hour day of writing; now I can write over 1,000 words an hour. And my editing work is so much faster that I have more time to write! I know there are newer versions, but this one works for me just fine. I was up and running in two days and it just keeps getting better as Dragon adapts to my pronunciation and I learn more commands. I am one happy, satisfied customer.

So far so good. Ive been using the Windows Speech Recognition program that was built into Windows 7 (my current OS) but comparing Dragon to the Windows program is like comparing a Lexus to a Model T. They both do pretty much the same thing but Dragon does it FAR better. Some of the advantages of Dragon: It is intuitive, whereas the Windows program doesnt seem to be, at least not nearly as much. For instance, when dictating (for example) the weather was fair today Dragon anticipates the meaning based on the context and will print fair rather than fare, a problem that was chronic with the Windows program with many similar-sounding words. It learns: the more you use it the better it gets. Ive had mine for only a few weeks and it is already much better at transcribing what I say. The commands seem to be designed for speed. For example with the Windows program if you want to capitalize a word or phrase you need to speak the phrase, then go back and highlight the word/words you want capitalized and say capitalize. With Dragon, just saying cap before the word will capitalize the word. Other commands make equal sense. Some of the commands in Dragon are similar to the ones in the Windows program (and can work interchangeably) but with the ones that are different the Dragon versions seem much speedier. The Text Box. With the Windows program there were applications that wouldnt accept dictation, in which case youd need to open MS Word, speak your text and after it was written, cut-and-paste it into the document in your other application. With Dragon, it instantly recognizes when it cannot type into an application and will bring up a text box that allows you to dictate your text. When finished just use the transfer command and Dragon posts it into your document. Problems? The instructions with the program tend to over-complicate things, but if youve used the windows program there is enough similarity so that once youve loaded Dragon you can use it immediately. However there are enough differences so that unless you really read the instructions and understand Dragon, you wont get nearly the speed out of it that it is capable of delivering. Also, I ordered the package deal with earphones and Dragon for Dummies--but if you do this please note that at least with the package I got, the Dragon for Dummies included was for Version 12, not Version 13 (which was the version of Dragon that I got) and there seemed to be enough differences so that the book, while helpful, is not the resource that it could be if it were based on the current version. Also note that the dragon software itself comes with a set of earphones (which I didnt know), so now I have two sets of earphones for the program, neither of which I use because of the analog connections (I have a USB set that is far superior to either of the two included with my order). All in all, a very good bang for your buck and light-years ahead of the program I was using. Just be sure what is in the package you are ordering.

Works great. Ive even used it to voice command Assassins Creed Syndicate. Placed on commands it works great to activate eagle vision, the rope launcher, or weapons etc. Just make sure you have plenty of RAM. Ive used this to dictate a book section that I needed, emails and other applications. Remember that the more you use it the better it gets. It does take a while to get used to the commands, but it recognized most words and is easy to correct using the mouse if needed. CONS: The microphone that comes with the product. You will get error messages that the sound is too low no matter what you do. I recommend the purchase of a USB microphone adapter. It will solve that issue and is cheaper than buying a usb headset. Will also allow you to listen to movies, games etc through the headphones which is great if you are a night owl like me and dont want to keep everyone else awake watching a movie at 3am. Would recommend for anyone who needs to do a lot of dictation such as converting hand written journals and letters to type etc.

I bought this dictation program (CD software and headset/mic) hoping that it would work, and knowing that because its Amazon, if it did not, I could get my money back. Well, surprise, it works incredibly well. I talk, it writes (into a Word file for me) almost exactly what I say. Of course, it will not get every word perfectly, but perhaps 95% to 99%, which is good enough, since I can speak about 4 times faster than I can type. If youre a writer, doing documents, drafts, etc., this product can save you a huge amount of time, and make you much more efficient.

I havent started using it intensively but the voice recognition training went pretty fast. One important thing is that the description of whats included in the package dd not list headphones and strongly implied that a separate headset needed to be purchased. So I bought the Koss CS 100 headset along with the software. Imagine my shock when i received the software and found the included headphone. Why this wasnt made clear in the description I dont know. But, unless you dont care about throwing away money this is important.