Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 [Old Version]

Im still trying to learn to use the software but became extremely frustrated when the included headphone and microphone broke after 2 days (headphones worked, mic did not - on 2 different computers). I bought a different headphone and mic set, so recommend that future buyers buy a different headphone/mic set rather than count on the one included with the product from Amazon. The software is adequate for what I need (dictating into word documents).

Ive used every version of Naturally Speaking since V2 (c 1997). This version is somewhat more accurate, but has several bugs--disappointing from Nuance. 1. a random character gets added beyond the dictation. If I delete it, another character pops up. 2. selecting a group of words and dictating over them (if I do not want to use the correct function) often leaves letters of the old phrase or does not space properly. 3. occasionally the correction function appears to get stuck and generates an internal error. I have to close down the program and restart. 4. save user profile often closes the program 5. the playback function on the correction window is frequently misaligned with the text, unlike in prior versions where this was rare. 6. I have not been able to complete additional training--the system crashes prior to saving the new speech files. Overall, V11 is promising, but I would wait until a service pack or revised version is available

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.

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 love the fact that I dont have to type my papers, but the program took some getting use to. The supplied headphones did not work well because it distorted the speech to such an extent that the program got the words wrong. I then bought an Andrea stereo headset and this was 90% better. Now I plan to upgrade my program but havent done so because the manufacturer wants full price. I paid full price upon original purchase. The upgrade should give the consumer a price break. I would have updated annually otherwise. As it is Im holding back on this one.

Lets face it, we all get very frustrated trying to learn new programs! But its usually not the program thats the problem. Its our lack of understanding on what it wants. As you know, computers are not intelligent beings - they only do what theyre told. In working with Dragon premium 11, it is exactly the same way. It only does what its told. The difference is now Im talking to it. And when it doesnt do what I tell it to do, I get very frustrated! After all - it couldnt be me, could it? It takes a lot of patience to learn any new program. And it takes even more patience to be comfortable with yourself, and learn to speak clearly and talk to an inanimate object. Articulate, articulate, articulate! Ive had the fortunate experience of some public speaking. That makes it a little easier for me to sit at my desk and talk to my dumb computer. But it still can be very frustrating. Im developing a new website, and felt that it would be very handy to use speech recognition instead of the keyboard for developing the content of my site. I first tried the speech recognition software that came with Vista - now that was interesting! Each paragraph was filled with gobbledygook and I actually ended up on the planet Jupiter! It didnt take long to know that was not what I wanted to use. I purchased Dragon premium 11 and have found it to be very precise and easy to use. The problem I have with it only happens when I began to mumble or not articulate my words properly or give incorrect commands. The most frustrating thing to me is learning the commands for fixing my mistakes. I find it gaining accuracy all the time as the program is continually upgrading my profile and learning the way I speak. And I am learning to be more accurate in my pronunciation. I am really enjoying this program, and hope become very proficient at it fairly quickly. I have written entire review with Dragon premium 11. There were a few mistakes that I corrected that were entirely my fault (the program worked well). The rest is left uncorrected. It works well. Just relax and be patient, especially with yourself. J. R. P. S. It even likes big words like articulate and objectionable and Pentateuch and introspective and hyperbaric biosphere and - well just get the program and give it a try. And be patient. Just remember what it was like when you tried to get your keyboard proficiency up to 70 words per minute.

I just bought a new laptop its a Tecra M11-S3440 (Sweet Rig) Pentium Core I5 with 4 GB of RAM 512mb Dedicated Video with my choice of XP, Windows 7 Professional 32 Bit, and Win 7 Professional 64 bit operating system. Since I have a snazzy new laptop I wanted to get the latest edition of Dragon because I figured that theyve had time to optimize it for Windows 7. I want my Windows 7 kept clean so Im only running latest and greatest on it. Im using a Xp Mode Virtual window for all my older programs. The most important part of this review is a rebuttal to those saying that it doesnt work with Windows 7. I first installed a Windows 7 32-bit because Ive heard of too many bugs with programs running on a 64-bit operating system. After installing Win 7 32 Bit I realized that I wanted to turn this laptop into a power machine and run 8gb of ram. Basically my concept is a 3-4gb dedicated to the Win xp Mode and 3-4gb dedicated to Win 7. Windows 7 32 Bit doesnt have the capability to manage that much Ram. So I used the system backup and made an image of the drive on my USB Hard drive. And than a recovery disk on a Dvd. (In case 64 bit didnt work well) and than reinstalled the system in 64Bit mode from the Toshiba install disks. This was a destructive install that re-formatted the hard drive and installed a whole new operating system and a new driver set. By the way Win 7 64 bit is working fine and xp compatibility mode is running all my 32 bit applications without breaking a sweat. The Dragon VS 11 install went very very smoothly. The disk recognized which operating system that I was installing in and made the appropriate installation. I was amazed, I was expecting trouble in the 64 Bit system and it just didnt happen. I did a little bit of training and am impressed by the quality of this program. It really did quite well for only 5-9 minutes of training and no document recognition. Ill probably follow up and edit it later on, to tell you how long it takes to match a well trained version 9( which I had previously). Since there are so many bad reviews I felt that I wanted to rush a review out that this program does an almost flawless install in Windows 7 32-bit edition and 64 bit edition on a clean machine. My definition of Clean machine is that Ive never had a previous version of Dragon running on this machine and the minimum of programs and junk is on this machine. I also have disabled all firewalls and antivirus programs for the install. I should mention that so far this program is much faster than the old version. It seems to do it a little bit differently the screen puts up large swatches of text. The quickness though could be due to the fact that I have a much faster machine. On the other hand Im absolutely amazed because I can talk and talk and talk for a while and then itll just appear on the screen in huge huge patches of text whereas the old program would kind of lag behind the way you were speaking. I suspect that this version is going to be superior to the old version because right now with no training its picking me up very very well. But Ill come back and edit the review a third or fourth or fifth time. My next addition will be in 4-5 days because Im waiting for my 8gb of ram to come in and than Im going to install Dragon on my XP virtual machine. Hey if that works than Ill have to re title the review. I suspect the reason why my installs have been problem free are that I dont have a previous version of Dragon and I also dont have the years of Detritus that many people (including me) pick up in there messy registrys. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Update after 1 week. Im so pleased with Dragon Im crowing. As I mentioned before I was running Dragon on a Windows 7 64 bit system with Xp mode. Unfortunately initially when I installed it in Windows 7 it wouldnt work in Xp mode. So I decided to install the program in Xp Mode, yes two installs on the same system. Flawless install again!! But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. I tried importing my VS 9 profile into Dragon. It was a total disaster for some reason it couldnt recognize the sound system correctly. I couldnt get it to pass voice training, Why I dont know, probably not Dragons fault many variables here. I should mention that a VIRGIN Profile running in Xp mode worked perfectly.So I can say that Dragon works in Xp mode. I find it to be faster in 64 bit Windows 7. I strongly suspect that importing from previous version of Dragon just doesnt work right but again there are too many variables and I really dont want to futz around. But anyway after 1 freeze and a total reboot of the system, I discovered that Dragon Running in Windows 7 would now work in both 7 and Xp Virtual mode without having to start the program in XP. Seamlessly it switched back and forth. This is so convenient that it made up for the disastrous import of the VS 9 files. Dragon recognizes the machine code of the system so I didnt have any problem with the automatic registration. By the way it is doing a really excellent job of dictating even though its only had 5 minutes of training so I dont anticipate much time to get it up to speed.Out of the box with little training it blows the version 9 away.!!

This is the best money I have ever spent for a program. I had read all the reviews and researched prices and this was such a deal I could not pass it up. I review and type medical records, so this was a huge time saver for me. Now instead of me typing, the dragon does all the work. You do have to train your dragon, but that has been half the fun of this program. To give an example, I was using a medical word parenthesis (numbness) and the dragon translated it to a pair of thieves in Paris!! Actually cracked me up trying to figure out what I said!! But then you just click on the word (or words in this case) and spell the word you wanted, and then train the dragon by saying that word. The next time, no matter how badly I said the word, the dragon got it right. You find yourself learning to enunciate words better. Another example was, syncope and the dragon typed, sticky feet. It is well worth letting the dragon search your files of word documents and emails to find words which it saves. Each time you add new words, he remembers it! I find myself asking, what took me so long to buy a program like this. Seriously, I do not know of other programs like this but when I searched voice activated programs on Google this one jumped off the page. I am thrilled with the results. Since purchasing it, I found a lot of my friends and family had either used it in college, or are using it today. Go for it, you will be glad you did. Watch for the sale though, because this program was $99.99 one night and $199.99 another. I got it for the $99.99 and it included the microphone and headset.

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.

Used 10.0 and have been using v11 for over a year. Use it mostly with Outlook and Word for short communications, not long novels. Use it some with Excel. I dont use it much for commands. It saves keystrokes and mouse clicks which could be very important for people with reptitive stress issues. It doesnt perform as well as Id like. For example, if I use a particular word multiple times the same way, Id like Dragon to learn that but to my surprise I still have to correct the word day after day and multiple times in the same document. Other times, maybe it does learn. As of the time Im writing this review, I havent upgraded to v12 for $100.