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 am extremely upset as I was sold an obsolete product that cannot be installed on my computer. Why are these obsolete products still available? Now I am inconvenienced by having to return the product. Pi$$ed I am. AND it will cost me money to return the product. NOT HAPPY. Be careful of what you buy folk.

I love it. Over 11 years ago tried a program like this for medical dictation and it didnt work at all. Recently because of some bursitis I thought I would purchase this program based on some positive reviews I saw in the last week. Im having to do some dictation with medical terminology and it works great I love it. I wish I wouldve considered purchasing this unit months ago as I believe I would have been able to accomplish a lot more work with my note taking. Its amazing it works so well. Its easy to use. I recommend this definitely

I purchased version 13 for home usage. its accuracy is amazingly superior to versions 10 and 12, both of which I have had. However, at times my computer appears to have too many resources running, resulting is painfully long response times. Even a single word can take minutes to display. One time when it happened, I shut down Google and almost immediately got a better response time. Be prepared to do the same. But if you hate to type or make many typing errors, Dragon Naturally Speaking is your remedy. My only warning is that you discipline yourself to learn the commands that make corrections an easy task. Dragon Bar occasionally misunderstands a word and displays wording that must be changed. Some other words it seems to know from context and can, therefore, distinguish among homonyms like to, too or two, or for, fore and four. I cant say enough good about this product except for the times the computer over-load simply wont let it function.

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

EDITED_It is working now. It took a total of 6 hours and deleting and reinstalling it three times for it to finely work. Good product just way to difficult to get to work. I suggest 1 it needs to take less then 4 gb of space and it needs to load faster. I think this product could be better. IT IS NOT WORKING. After five hours of fighting with this it is not working. My mic works. My mic works on the computer. I hear my self from the mic. I go through the dang profile thing and when it says to test your mic and I go to turn on Dragons button it stays red and not green. It will not work.

I am a Computer Tech and I use this for emails and creating detailed Trouble Tickets. Mostly this is pretty good, but sometimes it misunderstands me. As I said, I am a PC Tech. I can be doing Tickets for clients and say Installed a Printer. Instead of the typed message, Windows opens the New Printer Wizard. Once I said Rebooted the PC and DNS almost rebooted my PC. Ive tried turning off the Commands portion, but that does restrict the functionality of the PC. BTW, it does not type curse words. You still have to delete the gibberish, but at least it is not profane. :)

I used this when I had a really bad accident and couldn’t use my hands. Got this for my mom for her Christmas present for her business that she writes 50+ emails a day. Of course she hasn’t even opened it yet. Sigh. Only con when I used it was that it took a good week or two to recognize my voice, but perfect for nagivating the web, creating word documents/excel, and sending emails all without using your keyboard!

Im dictating this review so you can get a sense of how accurate it actually can be. I usually need to make at least two or three minor corrections in one short paragraph. Dragon is a godsend for people who really have problems with their arms and cant type or input text the usual way. Dragon 13 does seem to be a improvement over Dragon 12; theres a considerable uptake in speed. A huge problem remains that it is practically dysfunctional in Microsoft Word. I use the dictation box or pad and then copy and paste my text into my word file. I did not have any particular problems with the installation, beyond the fact that it took a very long time (a few hours). Dictating this review, there was one major error: Dragon typed men instead of improvement. However, Dragon is typing the words almost as quickly as I can say them. I like that a lot.

When they say turn off your anti-virus software they mean it. It will not install with your anti-virus software active (all sorts of strange errors). Also, this is a very big application. It took so long to install (almost an hour) that I thought something was wrong. I called Nuance and they provided a link to download the product to my computer so that it would install faster. By the time I found the link and started to download, the application finally installed. I First used this product back in the late 1990s when I was temporarily unable to use my left arm. I bought this one for my mother. I was pleased to see the learning module. While my mother is having a lot of trouble with the product, Im chock that up to being a technophobe who does not follow directions. I found it easy to configure and use. It is not a perfect solution, but then again we do not live in the Star Trek Universe. You still need to do some mouse clicking and some typing, but it does save you from having to do a lot. If you take the time to learn how it works and take more time to teach it what you need it to do, it will serve you well. I did not give it 5 stars because of the install issues (they really should tell you how to turn off the major anti-virus softwares and warn you that it will take a long time). Also, Im a little tired of sitting with my mother teaching her how to use it. The education lessons were not designed for the generation who can really benefit from the product; aging adults over 70.