Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 [Old Version]

Though Ive had the product since January Im unable to actually give it a review as my efforts at installation and activation have been unsuccessful.Reaching the customer service department at Nuance by phone has been an exercise in futility,and even their email is set up to say youre message wasnt sent because of an error,but not what the error was. I havent given up on it,though,and have hope of putting it to good use when I get it working. On a more positive note,I am able to give Amazon a review,and its a good one.You guys are the best.Many companies run well,but few are as well run,taking care of business not only with attention to detail,but with courtesy,honesty and goodwill as well.It is a genuine pleasure doing business with you.If America were as well run as Amazon,Id have a lot more faith in our future. Sincerely,mover1414,Palm Springs,California

I was a little apprehensive when I read Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Dummies and it said not to expect much if you use Biblical phrases. I had ordered Dragon for the express purpose of writting Bible Studies so I thought that I had really made a mistake. But Dragon learns easily and it incorporated the vocabulary from previously written studies and seemed to know what word to use when I spoke it. I had to train it a little on Ezekiel but it got Jehovah and Hezekiah right off. All in all I am very happy with Dragon. But dont order the Dragon for Dummies book - it is about 6 versions behind. Also do not order the Sennheiser headset microphone that is listed in Amazon as it is for wireless (even the one that doesnt say wireless) and the connector does not work properly. Speech Recogition Solutions has the same microphone with a standard plus.

Im impressed with this software. I use it for dictating interviews and reports. You have set it up at the start. It means reading around 20 minute worth of a known story. Once done, you get about 90 percent correct dictation out of the box. If you take the time to correct errors using the software, most of the common errors dissappear.

The new version of Dragon - 11.5 Premium has major problems with Word Perfect v. X6. For instance, the correct that feature simply doesnt work. Ditto for certain other features. I have had it for a month, and talked to the Dragon folks shortly after it was installed. They said they were aware of this problem and would be releasing an update/fix. A month later nothing has been done. If you use Word Perfect, I would not buy this product until I could confirm that the problem has been fixed.

Bought Dragon to speed up the process of writing blogs, articles, and books. I find it does that, if I have put some thought into what I want to say, and how I will outline my thoughts ahead of time. If I just sit down to start talking and compose as I go, I end up having a fair amount of editing to do afterward. The software works well, catches most words accurately. If I were to spend a bit of time reading instructions, I would probably use more of the available functions and commands (like making headings, and using less common punctuation marks). Im a beginner but will continue to be a Dragon user and hope to become a superuser eventually.

I recently bought a new computer (64-bit, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2300 CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s), 8 GB of RAM) with Win 7 Pro installed. Id been thinking about trying Dragon for a while and decided this would be the computer to try it with. Ordered from Amazon and it was delivered promptly. I installed it for the first time on 6/2/2011 and went through the registration process successfully. When I tried to run it I got an error: NaturallySpeaking isnt installed completely. Please try reinstalling. When I clicked details I got this additional information: One or more registry settings are corrupt and your registry permissions prevent Dragon NaturallySpeaking from correcting them. Please run Dragon NaturallySpeaking Setup and select the Repair option. I followed that suggestion and again got the notice at the end that installation was successful. But got the same error when I started the program. I went to the online support page on their site and filled out a support ticket with all pertinent information. On 6/3 I got a response giving detailed instructions for taking a screenshot of the error message and pasting it into Word and uploading it to them. I had already pasted the full text of the error message into my support message, and I had uploaded the dragon log file that also gave the full text of the error message, but I took a screenshot and uploaded it. Their next response explained how to set the computer to start up in diagnostic mode and told me to do that and install Dragon. Followed the instructions and got an error that Windows Installer Service couldnt be Accessed. I reported this back through their online support system. And support basically went quiet on me for five days. I continued to experiment with the installation, with no luck. While doing this I noticed an app that was loaded that their setup complained about...it couldnt stop it and wanted me to do so. It was Acresso Software Manager, which it turns out was installed by the Dragon InstallShield setup program. Several days later I started getting pop-up ads on my computer that I traced to this app. On 6/8, after submitting several more online updates and sending several emails to support asking if they were going to respond, I called the support line and spent over an hour online with a very nice support person in the Philippines. His English was good and I could understand him. He had me change some registry settings and reinstall. He also sent me an exe to run to fix an issue with GUIDs. After an hour of trying solutions that didnt help, he emailed me a link to download another build of DNS 11 that he said would fix the issue. I downloaded the 2.3 GB EXE and first ran it in repair mode as suggested. Same thing. Then did a full uninstall and reinstall...same thing. I reported all this to online support and uploaded the log again. I got the original canned response to set startup to run in Diagnostic mode, with the addition of explaining how to first set up an admin account. Did that, uninstalled and reinstalled. Same error when trying to run the program. Ive sent several more emails and online updates in the four days since that, but have had no response from support. While reading other reviews this morning I came across references to Windows Voice Recognition. Id forgotten it existed and hadnt tried it for years. Figured out how to activate it on Win 7 and did so...that took about five minutes and it worked fine. Decided to try it on my Asus netbook, to see how it works on a lower-powered computer (running Win 7) and it worked fine there too. Perhaps not as well as DNS 11 would work IF DNS 11 would work for me, but at least it worked with close to 100% recognition. I decided to uninstall and return the DNS 11 app to Amazon. This is the first thing I have returned to Amazon and wasnt sure just what to expect. It was absolutely simple and a model for all other companies. Clicked a button, selected a reason, clicked to print the UPS label, and that was it. I couldnt believe they even paid the return postage. Class act. Nuance outsources their support to a company with the rather inaccurate name RightNow. I think RightNow needs to put a little more effort into setting up their online support system...there is really no excuse for going four or five days without responding to an update on an ongoing problem.

I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for over a decade. Each update touts its new features and improved accuracy. I have never achieved anything like the level of accuracy described in the brochures. Even at 99% accuracy, a 5000 word story or paper would have at least 50 errors or more. The power of my Dell Inspiron with a Pentium I5 and eight gigs provides the power needed to run the software. An underpowered computer will not give you a satisfactory performance. the accuracy does improve when I use a version for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

I can really see the benefit of this product. The only reason I gave it four stars is that I cant seem to get to the point of regular use. Im sure its easy once you grow accoustomed to it, but I seem to be having problems with the learning curve. Perhaps Ill purchase a training video and that will do the trick.

One star since completely unable to use if your system is running an instance of an EMR. I have my EMR running in the background and cannot use Dragon for email or other non-medical applications without completely shutting down the medical software. Useless. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 was purchased to dictate letters to patients. I used a previous version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical and did not need the medical vocabulary for what I dictate. The medical version is VERY expensive- several hundred dollars more than this version. This version loads and generally works as expected until you try to use in a medical software program. (I use NextGen on a Citrix client). The Dragon program shuts off the microphone and a window pops up informing that Premium 11 version is prohibited for use in medical programs. You have pay more simply to be allowed to dictate into a medical program, even if you dont need the vocabulary. Healthcare workers are not the only ones that should be disgusted with Nuance (the makers of Dragon), but patients should be peeved, too. Price gouging for medical equipment results in higher costs for patients. Nuance should be ashamed for this horrible behavior.

I just upgraded from 10 to 11 premium and it seems to work great. it is faster, works better, and makes far less mistakes as version 10. I see a lot of people here complaining about it not working correctly and being buggy, I do see what they are seeing. I did deactivate my antivirus during the install, and my computer has all the windows updates needed before I installed. I also have updated all the installed software to make sure it was all up to date. I have a vista 64 bit system upgraded to windows 7 ultimate. I do know that ultimate has more compatibility than lesser versions. I use an hp system. I am also using the wireless version of the product running it into a usb 2.0 port. At first there were some small issues with the software, but after I used it for about 1 week they all seemed to go away. It seems like a nice upgrade from version 10 and things are better and smoother. I would recommend buying it. I only gave it 4 stars because the software is and always has been less than perfect. I think that it is going to be many years before this type of software works perfectly every time, so if that is what you are expecting you will be disappointed. Also, it takes some patience, so be prepaired to have some...