Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 [Old Version]

I have used voice recognition software at work for the past 6 years and have really liked it. I wanted something at home to allow me to take notes while I read without stopping to write it down. Im in the medical field and had concerns about how well this would work with all the specialized vocabulary, but it works great. I wasnt about to spend 1500 for the professional medical version and Im glad I didnt. Its easy to use and overall money well spent for me. I only use the product for a specific purpose so I cant talk much about all the features, but so far it has worked great. My only complaint is that the headset is uncomfortable.

I am envious of the reviewers who had no trouble with installation. I believed, since I have a new, clean Windows 7 64 bit system, that I too would have such an experience. Outside of the fact that everything Ive ordered recently from Amazon seems to have some delay in shipment, I am extremely frustrated with this product. I used Dragon 9 on my old laptop to dictate my patient notes. While not flawless, it saved me several hours a night on charts. Upon purchase of a newer laptop, I could not (nor could anyone else) get Dragon 9 to work. After reading the reviews here and elsewhere, I ordered Version 11 Premium. 6 hours later I am still unable to install the product due to various Errors (many of which appear to be searching for a file on my C drive). My IT savvy friends are unable to install the product. Nuance Customer Service tells me there must be some other program preventing the install. Perhaps that may be true, but its hardly service to tell me theres a problem and not offer a solution. I am also not pleased that the software arrived without a manual - when I pay nearly $200 for a product I expect something more than a trifold card with quick and dirty instructions on it. The box does not even appear to be a standard manufacturers. I have faith that the seller will right things for me, but I suspect this will mean returning the item (and yes, I am aware that Windows 7 comes with its own VR software, but it doesnt work well either Ive learned).

The product works pretty well and I really like it BUT the first time I had a technical difficulty I encountered their horrible customer service. While starting up the program I was receiving an error message that wouldnt allow me to go any further. I called technical support after telling them I uninstalled the program then tried to reinstall it but lost the serial number to do so. I had a receipt from Amazon but they(Nuance) I told me the vendor was not an authorized vendor and they would be unable to help me!!!!!!! Sure its my fault that I lost the serial number on the sleeve, but I had a copy of the receipt and had just purchased it recently! Luckily I found the serial number on the sleeve, Reinstalled the program, and I was still getting the same error message. I called technical support for assistance and they told me to run the repair program on the CD. The program still did not work after doing so and then they told me that if I wanted further assistance I would have to pay $19.99 to fix this COMMON PROBLEM on Windows 7!!!!!!!!! Extremely frustrating!

I had very high hopes for this product at the time I purchased it. The first few weeks of use went pretty well and I was elated with the performance. As time went by, more and more problems arose. Dragons software apparently does not play well with other applications (word processors, spreadsheets, contact managers, etc.) being active at the same time. The Dragon software seems to get in fights, of sort, with these other applications and then refusing to work at all until it is rebooted. This product is installed on a 16 GB memory, 4-processor, Windows 7, 64 bit, machine. I sure wish the Dragon folks could get this thing working -- Id love to make it a part of my business day!

UPDATE 2/7/13: I totally forgot to post an update. Like I said...I hate to leave bad reviews so I am very happy to be able to add a star to my review after using the product. It works well if you do the reading samples and let the software adjust to the way you speak. I was able to write my book really fast by being able to speak into Dragon Software. Would get 5 stars except for the customer service issues way back when (which did end up finally being resolved). :) UPDATE: I finally reached someone who could help me. It took longer then I wanted but he was very helpful and nice and resolved the problem. I dont want to return the product because I really think it will help me. I get to try it tonight and I will post my thoughts on it later. FIRST POST:I do not like to write bad reviews. HOWEVER, I called NUANCE customer service twice and I was told they could not help me because I purchased their product from Amazon.com. PROBLEM: I got the software and my computer will not recognize the CD. I had the same problem with Adobe Creative Suite, however when I put an HP CD in my computer or another CD it works just fine. If they send me another CD, it probably will react the same way Adobe Creative Suite did. I ended up having to download their software online after 3 attempts. The annoying part is I have a SERIAL NUMBER for the product I purchased. All they need to do is give me the download link and I can enter my serial number as verification....BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! It is a simple solution that their customer service can not comprehend. I have class on Wednesday. I was hoping to be able to get my homework done through Dragon because that is the only reason I purchased the product. I am upset because once I am able to get the product downloaded I still have to train it and see if it actually works. Their customer service is awful and I saw this in other reviews, but when I saw their Vice President of something in their company responding to their bad reviews and trying to make things right, I thought they were making a sincere effort to improve their customer service. I guess all they do is damage control instead of having good service from the start.

I have been using this software for two years and it works great better than everything before. The first time I used it I could not get it trained properly and I figure it out that the headset that come with it was not a good quality not the quality you need. So I tried training it with a $12 Plantronics headset that i purchased from Amazon and it started working perfectly for me. It can be very frustrating especially when you know youre speaking right and clearly. The software is a very good value for the price compared to the Professional version Before 11 you would have to purchase Dragon professional for over $500 to get these results. I would recommend this to anyone just be sure and purchase a better headset Nuance should be ashamed of themselves for selling quality software with a cheap headset Bad Business Decision Don West I have been using Dragon products since 1991 with good results

When you buy software like this the obvious intention is to make your life a little easier and have things done a little quicker where time counts, time is money, is a reality. But if youre expecting to come right out of the gate running twice or three times as fast as you have been your expectations are too high. Like anything thats new, (new to me anyway), theres a learning period. Theres an X amount of time that it takes to learn how to use the software, and in this case, also for the software to learn how to respond to you. The incredible thing about Dragon Premium 11.5 is that it has a very fast learning curve. I can say this unequivocally because I owned and used Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 11.5 edition. That edition is considerably slower in learning and I can only surmise that Nuance simply didnt put as much software information into Dragon Naturally Speaking Home edition as they did in the Premium edition. So when you get Dragon Premium out-of-the-box and you set up your first profile pay particular attention to something called Words and Phrases and instructions about Vocabulary options because these things are very important in how fast Dragon is going to learn your style of writing and speaking. Because its all about time, (how much time you spend speaking into the microphone and allowing Dragon to listen & learn), when you get DNS Premium 11.5 going on your computer you actually can have it up to its 98% accuracy rate within three or four hours of dictation time! There are a number of things that you should know about Dragons way of doing things and the manual isnt always the best way to go on some of these operations. I suggest very strongly that you pay a visit to KnowBrainer.com and read a few of the posts regarding merging other vocabulary and profile options of previous DNS programs. If you had a previous version of DNS on your computer its not always best to carry the profile over and KnowBrainer.com is a true must in my opinion. The information that you can get is invaluable in forum of that website. As for DNS Premium 11.5, I strongly recommend this program to anyone whos looking for speech to text software but doesnt want to spend $500 or more on some of the higher-end offers out there. One more word of advice; I went through several headsets before I settled on one that works for me, (the one I got was Plantronics 995 USB wireless headset). Im not saying that it doesnt have its faults, (its pretty heavy, it encompasses the entire ear on both sides, and can get somewhat uncomfortable after a while), but what is important is that whatever headset you do get, make sure that you place your microphone near your nose or nostrils. The placement of the microphone near the nostrils is crucial because it permits your pronunciations to be less nasal like. Dragon instructs that you place the microphone 1 inch from your mouth, (the corner of your mouth), but I think thats just a generic placement and I found that to be not nearly as effective as placing it between my nose and my mouth closer to my nostrils. The headset/microphone that you choose will be very important and play a big part in the accuracy of your speech to text software. This is also true of digital recorders. I use the Sony ICD SX712 but there are better, if not more expensive, digital voice recorders out there. Recommendations that Nuance give for which digital recorders and headsets to use are not based on any real research at all. There is more info on that fact in Knowbrainer.com. If you go to KnowBrainer.com you will find a far more accurate breakdown of the best headsets and digital voice recorders to use for DNS Premium as well as KnowBrainer software. I do give DNS Premium 11.5 all five stars and I also want to give a big thumbs up to their Customer Support Techs. Not everyone has had great results with them or the software but I think a lot has to do with the little things that I touched on and for which I believe they may have overlooked. That and the lack of patience will likely give you a bad experience. Oh and by the way, I did this entire review with DNS Premium 11.5. I used the digital recorder for most of it and the transcription had 4 errors. Two were definitely due to my poor annunciation, and the other two were capitalization errors. And Ive only had Dragon Premium for about 2.5 weeks! Try it.

this is harder to use than they lead you to believe on the TV ads. I find it doesnt work great for most of the programs I use. it seems okay for just dictating.I find it a little slow, and end up using the mouse for most commands. I think as I learn the voice commands it will get faster for me, but not for the program.

This is v-11.5 It is few years ago That I tried DNS, probably version 5 or 6. It was real bad and I spend more time on correcting than dictating. So I gave up. Wanted to try it again got a new computer with intel i5 chip and 8GB ram.. Got Andreas head set and am impressed with its speed and accuracy from day one. I am enjoying using it and it is improving its accuracy with continued use. I think voice recognition has matured now.

First, the good news. This purchase qualified for the upgrade to version 11.5 and then 12. Now the bad news. Version 12 seems faster but more buggy. The dictation is fine, but it goes a little crazy when doing corrections. Sometimes, it will pick a phrase and keep overwriting it, not allowing me to continue the dictation from the end. At other times, choosing a selection from the correction window inserts choose 1, rather than the the chosen word. Most aggravating, though, is Nuances limitation on how you can use this product. DNS Premium and Professional will not work with electronic health record (EHR) systems, and Dragon will turn off the microphone if you try. It seems that they want this category of users to buy the Dragon Medical edition, at more that 5 times the price. I am not a medical practitioner, but I assist practitioner clients. I am unable to interface with their EHR systems. Further, when I go to EHR related websites, Dragon switches off. This is websurfing, not utilizing EHR. I am offended by this marketing ploy forcing a certain class of customers into a higher priced product. Given this limitation, I would buy a different solution, if it were available. Problem is that Nuance has a corner on this market.