Nuance Dragon Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 (Old Version)

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 purchased in order to do academic writing--reading source material into the computer for later reference is much faster than propping up a book and typing it in. It is a memory hog though. With 4 GB memory, I find that I need to shut down everything but this and Word in order for it to operate acceptably. There still are a few things about it that bug me, but for the price it is a good buy. It comes with a headset, which I did not know, so I bought a bundle with a headset. You dont need to. In fact, the bundled headset didnt even work, so I sent it back.

I certainly would not recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. First of all it was hard to get installed. I even called technical support for help and they had me download the program to install and it still wouldnt work. After many hours of trying to install it, it finally installed. However, it kept hanging up. It wouldnt even run long enough to go through any training for it. The training feature of this program gave the warning that the training program was not compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The program also gave warnings about a third party program interfering with it and I could never find any other program running. After searching on line for a solution I finally tried using the voice recognition feature in Windows. Windows voice recognition works wonderfully. It does everything that Dragon NaturallySpeaking says it would do and and takes dictation very fast. Naturally you have to give it some training as you would with any voice recognition program. I am writing this review with Windows voice recognition. It keeps up with me wonderfully gives me tremendous control of my computer through voice commands. No, I do not recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. I just wasted a lot of money which I cannot afford to do. I see no reason not to use the Windows voice recognition program when it works so well.

For the average person, this would be a nightmare to install. There are NO installation instructions, not even so much as Insert CD in the drive and click on... One must go to the website to troubleshoot the problems. The first problem is that clicking on the Windows installer causes the disk to thrash. I tried this on two different computers running Windows 10 with the same result. What you have to do is ignore their FAQ entitled Program will not install and do the following: 1. Right click on the DVD drive. 2. Right click on Install. Thats it. Nuance could have saved me two hours of frustration had they simply included those instructions on the box or in the foldout reference manual. Also, do not use the optional splitter. Plug both the mic and the speaker jacks into their respective outlets. Once, I was able to execute what should have been a piece of cake implementation that was made needlessly difficult by Nuances terrible marketers/documenters, the software worked beautifully in its tutorial. Should anything change, I will update these comments.

I am using the Dragon (DS13) Software 13, and it is an extremely sharp tool. With his help, I do think my computer, and I can take over the internet. If I only had a brain, comes to mind, but this software is great! I recommend this product to any and every writer to preserve the quality of a penciled or penned draft. Have a nice word on me. DMF :)

I purchased this when I rotator cuff surgery, as I work on a computer all day. Now, to be fair, maybe I needed the professional version but this only worked ok. I did a LOT of training of it, let it update and save frequently but still ended up with some pretty interesting interpretations of what I had actually said. I would buy it again for the purpose I used it for but wouldnt continue to use it once better, as it was pretty annoying how often I had to correct it.

I very useful tool. I have never been a typist, came through the system before men were encouraged to take typing.When I was appointed as Secretary of our Water Board it became critical for me to find an effective way to produce Board Meeting minutes. I saw an add one evening on the TV and invested in the product. I have been a fan ever since and have begun using it in more of the ways possible in my daily writing activities, especially with the computer. I enjoy not having to depend on others to do this work for me, especially as doing it myself allows me to edit my work while typing it. This is my 3rd upgrade. I encourage everyone who cant type 90 words a minute to consider this as a very workable solution.

I am in the process of writing a book and am a horrible typist. So its taking forever. I stumbled upon this software while reading some writing blogs. I almost didnt buy it because of the negative reviews but I figured, for the price, why not? I purchased the disk version, used an external optical reader to load it on to my computer and it worked out of the box, as advertised. I was afraid I was going to have problems getting it loaded because it took literally 10 full minutes before it started installing. Perhaps people are just aborting the process when it appears to lock up? I went through a couple of screens with the install wizard before it appeared to freeze but I just left it alone and it eventually loaded with no problem. Of course, I have a newer computer so that may make a difference. I have had no problem getting it to work at all and the accuracy is exceptional. Certainly far better and quicker than anything I could produce. I have a relatively neutral accent and am a public speaker so I do tend to speak and enunciate my words clearly. I only use Dragon for Word to work on the book; I did not load it onto my browser. My productivity has gone up exponentially! I am not using the headset that came with the box; instead I am using a $60 Microsoft headset I bought off Amazon a while back. Using the headset makes working on my book as mobile as working on my laptop - even when dictating while at my sons baseball practice, the headset did not pick up anything other than my voice (not the music, coaches, kids or external sound). I did let the program peruse other documents, including my current book draft, so that it could learn my writing style and pick up some vocabulary words. Between that and reading the passage that Dragon provides to train the program, it took all of 10 minutes to train. I went back and forth on whether to get the home or premium version. For my needs, this home version is perfect because Im not going to use this for Excel, nor am I going to use an external voice recorder. Finally, I began practicing law over 20 years ago and always used dictation (because I couldnt type) so relearning dictation commands hasnt been difficult. Dragon comes with a cheat sheet to help you while you learn the commands. Ill keep it with me till I learn everything and then store it away. If youre thinking about purchasing this program, Id say go for it. For the price of a family meal at a restaurant, its a relatively low risk investment.

I am sitting at my wifes computer writing this review because the Dragon program messed up mine. I installed the Dragon Naturally Speaking Home on my computer, a Cybertron running Windows 10 with an i7 processor. The program came with a headset, so I used that on my computer. After installing it, the program has a set up. First you go through a long processes of registering the program, then it takes you to a set up sequence. During this set up it installs a menu that has a large button on it. Hovering over that button will tell you if the microphone is on or off. It started in the off position, and it never changed. It is impossible to turn the button on. As I was going through the set up, it wanted me to download Bonjour, an Apple program free on the internet. I tried to do that but ran into issues. I finally downloaded the program, but when I tried to continue to load Dragon it failed to recognize the microphone. Over and over it kept telling me to turn on the microphone before it could continue. Over a dozen times I went to the dashboard button and clicked it, but it never came on. I went to the help sites, both on Nuance and on the web, and never resolved the issue. I plugged and unplugged the line numerous times on the headphone/microphone set that came with the program without any progress. I also switched locations from the back of the tower, to the front of the tower, then to the monitor and none of them changed the outcome. The microphone stayed off. So I switched microphones. I put a KLIM USB microphone on the machine, and it still failed to work. The program set up will not recognize any microphone I have tried. And I plugged and unplugged the KLIM several times and used several USB ports. In addition, Bonjour turned off the speakers on my computer. When searching the system error messages I was told the download turned off my speakers, but it never told me how to turn the speakers back on. More problems. Because of this, I manually loaded the microphone specs into the program. It accepted them and said OK, but the microphone never turned on. I erased Bonjour and reloaded everything, to no avail. The microphone will not work. Its simple enough, no microphone no speech program. So, I am now faced with a total disaster. My computers speakers are disabled, and none of the microphones will work. The Bonjour seems to have turned off the ability of my computer to recognize any microphone for any purpose. Of course, it could have been the Dragon program that messed them up. Its hard to say. Even when I leave Dragon, none of the microphones work, but they did before - so why did they quit now? Without some kind of outside help this isnt going to resolve itself. I may be stuck with taking my computer into a repair shop and paying for some type of reset. All because I bought this program. Even if Amazon gives me my money back, which they might not, Ill have to pay extra to fix the computer problems caused by the program. Believe me when I tell you this is a dangerous program to install on Windows 10. In my opinion, this program has the potential to devastate your computer. This is NOT a benign install. Ive researched other dictation programs, but - at least on Amazon - none are available. AD2

Dragon Naturally Speaking Home Review I bought this one because it was the cheapest, but didnt consider the add-ons 1. Headphones ( the ones with two prongs and mic) 2. special connection jack 3. second special connection jack since the first one didnt fit my computer. It takes an hour to upload. I also had to watch Youtube videos to install the voice recognition mike and software, which I did. Ran through the tutorial, which shows you many things you can do--only to find out my version didnt do it. I went to the Chrome store and added a dictation box, since the software is made to work with Internet Explorer. On the introduction, I could choose from Southern American, Spanish Accented English, British English, and Standard. I chose standard, but soon found out certain words with U, OUR, or OU the the software had no clue what I was saying. I did talk slowly, ennunciate, and in full sentences. It also has an issue with homonyms. It spelled dawn as Dawn and Don. I could not use quote marks because my version didnt support it. I have read online that I can go into Microsoft office and tweak a few things, so I might try that. The home version is good for writing emails and searching the web. These were never things I had issues with. In the end, it made more work for me.