Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

The instructions are to vague for someone as me who are older and do not have High-Tec, skills to follow complicated instructions. I would wish they could make things more simple. Dragon for dummies assumes you have knowledge on the product and go from there. I need step one, open the box and go from there. I am still trying to make it work, my fingers are old and stiff, and still much to do. Harley 77 years young

I invested in a high-quality desktop mic for my computer so that I can use Dragon Naturally Speaking. However, the computer keeps telling me that the audio quality is very poor and recommends the mic be 1 to 2 inches from my face. I dont know about any of you, but my workspace is not set up so that I can have microphone an inch from my face for the entire day. I also dont want to be tethered to my desk with a headset and cord all day. the speech recognition quality actually seems to be somewhat reasonable, but the value is questionable. The biggest downside is that Dragon does not work with Microsoft Lync, which is an egregious oversight. looking online, I now see that there are articles from several years ago saying that Reagan does not work with Lync. WTF? The main reason I have carpal tunnel syndrome is because Im typing in Lync messenger all day. This was basically a waste of money.

I purchased this product for my daughter going away to college. I believe the product works but I also know that it takes some time to get used to. Time is a very big issue with me so I decided to return it. I contacted the company and there were no issues, I would recommend the product for someone who has to the time it takes to learn it correctly, I think it could be a big help and I would recommend the company because they did everything they said that they would.

This is a good way to talk and compose a report or book. It does take some extra effort to educate the program to the persons speech pattern and to find ways to correct the errors that find their way into the document. At times it is a slow process, but as the program and the writer continue to practice it gets better and manageable.

Cut my writing down by 50% because I dont have to go back and correct everything I write. Only thing I had to get used to ,was thinking in complete sentences, which when youre typing, you tend not to do. Do always go through the training exercises it suggests, and learn how to use it by reading what it is capable of, and how to do it. That way, you get full benefit from the software. Be warned it is VERY resource hungry, so throw the fastest processor and at LEAST 4GB of memory at it, otherwise it will frustrate you.

This review of mine is just a personal experience. Some people’s experience might be different from mine. I got this version for some time already, and I’ve only used it in the first year for a couple of reason. I put up many hours in the practice module; I even bought a sennheizer USB headset with a mic to have a better experience using it; however, the result is still subpar. Whats confusing though is that, I always do good in every practice mode, but every time I use it for my article that’s when the problem starts to happen. It’s receiving a lot of unintended words that I have to keep repeating myself over and over again. To me, the software only likes a certain kind of tone to understand the word because it can have issues when I start to speak a little bit excited or even worse such as like a conversational tone. Right now, I tried to be simple and only use an app that I bought in apple store, and it only cost me $9.99. The result is way better than my experience with the dragon software. It doesn’t even need any special headset or practice module. So to be short, my experience is just a waste of time and money.

I chose this item cause I HATE to type and thought this would be perfect in helping me get caught up with my work at the office. However I spent more time fixing the mistakes and getting frustrated when Dragon couldnt understand what I was saying that it now sits in its original box on a shelf. It sounded awesome and I bragged to everyone about ordering it. Now everyone is asking about Dragon and laughing when I say, if I took the time to learn it maybe it would be good but I dont have the time that is needed. Oh and I did not get it at the great sale prices it is currently selling for ....so yes I got duped hopefully by reading this you wont. Like I said if you have time to learn all its tricks Im sure it would be awesome but when one see online there are actual training classes for the software I should have known.....and I work in IT.

I know exactly what your thinking, your saying to yourself, this is the only thing on the market, and dragon has been around for years, and your also thinking, by now-dragon must have perfected this?!? Read on my beloved friends. DRAGON 3 for MAC brand new out of the box, is a nightmare. How its possible that everything failed, either within an hour or after 20 minutes use. is beyond me, but everything failed, and epically. The software failed, the headset failed and customer support is the worst experience of my life. ****Seriously people, if your on heart medication or stress medication, please please read this review, and stay away from this product. I don’t want to see anyone have a heart attack or sesure from the aggravation. Trust me, Im talking from the heart-the reason Im spending the time here to write out every detail is because I care about the horror your about to go through… Theres really not much to say about the headset because they failed completely and utterly and miserably. It actually blew my mind but to give a little bit more detail about that, what happened was for the first few minutes of usage, I was getting a crackling static noise. Then that noise became more continuous. Yeah lots of fun. And you know it never really did resolve itself. And now, lets move on to customer support. Customer support is, yep you guessed it, ****contracted out to save money, overseas.***** They do not understand english very well and have little training, but the worst part about the horrendous customer support is they interrupt you every time you try to speak, and get this-they start yelling at you, or they’ll get aggravated at you and pause and not say anything or they’l just get an attitude, -its so bad that I took the time out to record these people so as to send the recording to corporate to get them fired… May god strike me down if Im lying…. But thats just the beginning of the nightmare of customer support-finding the right number takes hours, and once again, your talking to people in indonesia, who for some reason, and it must be something to do with the culture and language differences,every time you try to talk, they start talking over you... I still can’t believe it, but it gets worse, every time I called I was, 6th on the line, so waiting was an average of an hour, yep, lots of fun-but wait its gets interestingly worse, And I say interestingly because youre not going to believe what they do to avoid helping you once you wait an hour on the phone. You’re going to love this one... So here you are, after waiting one hour on the phone, a machine comes on the line and says, “ you are the next caller” then after a few minutes, and you know right away that the help center has you on the line because the music stops-there is a 10 to 15 second pause… Just dead air, so Im like hello??? hello??? more dead air, I say hello??? more dead air- I honestly think its a technique the customer support uses to get the caller to hang up. It seems like they don’t want to do their job, so they must know that if they don’t say anything-they can avoid helping you-and get paid for doing nothing ,meanwhile they havent done anything that incriminates them- But wait it get worse-after 15 seconds of dead air-the guy says, in a very miserable kind of like, I really don’t want to help you voice-hello. So Im like hey hello!!! then , I think you guessed it by now-the guy strategically pauses for another 10 seconds, hoping that on the second try-you’ll get so frustrated that you hang up…. I remember I was in bed lying down speaking very calmly, because you know, this is important to me, so I figured if I was calm they would help me better, and nope. I kept getting the same guy, and like I was saying, I was trying to be calm, and long stoy short, this guy aggravated me so badly, that as I was lying down, I turned my neck maybe not even a half of an inch, and threw my upper right back out-form the stress he caused…so for days it felt like there was a knife stuck in my upper back, I can’t make this stuff up people…. the soft ware once I finally loaded it onto my brand new state of the art MacBook Pro top of the line 8 gigabyte 256 flash hard drive”for those who aren’t aware, this is the best most expensive and latest machine on the market, failed multiple times, I was getting the infamous multi colored spinning circle. So I reinstalled and- same thing. I had my best friend who is all about macs look at it and he said its definitely not the lap top-it s the soft ware, which I already knew but you know, I wanted to make sure and he is a MAC guy, and he verified that its the soft ware-he got aggravated and could not believe how bad DRAGON 3 for MAC is... yeah I really dont know what to say anymore except dont bang your head against the wall if you do youll have no more brains left.. Ive already lost mine A long long time ago in a place far far away. PS so while my friends was trying to help me, he mentioned that my MacBook Pro comes with a voice recognition system and that I should try it and yeah, you guessed it, low and behold, I tried it and it works good, not great but good, good enough for me to be happy. So then I was like, well thats a kick in the ass and I thought maybe if I also incorporate a good headset into my MacBook Pro thatll help. So I did my research and I went and got the black wire C7 20 made by plantronics and I have to admit its working very very well and yes thats what Im writing this review with. Long story short people youve got to keep trying anything and everything and if you can, get anybody or everybody to try to help you. I I succeeded in my goal- but Dragon 3 from Mac, is an epic failure...

The software I can recommend. I got this for my son that had trouble writing so that he could keep up in school. Everything was working well, but the headset is cheap and it broke. So just keep in mind that you may need to purchase your own.

this product has meant so much to me. I am now able to speak and the program puts everything I say in the places I need them to be. It is so easy to use and all the help in tutorials are fantastic. If you do a lot of emails, paperwork dictations, filling out forms or anything that uses printed words this is the program for you. I cannot say enough about Dragon Naturally Speaking. I am telling everyone about it and all that have invested in it have loved this software. It makes sending mail as fast as you can speak.