Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

After seeing this around for the last 19 years or so, I figured they may have gotten their act together. My ex-wife warned me three years ago that it still was far from a good product. I found out quickly. It literally takes over your computer adding all kinds of bars and tools, then has you read various scripts to learn your voice. I chose three, including the hardest one. Playback time - UGLY! Who has time to continue playing with this in the hopes that someday the skies will open and I can get usable transcripts? Three weeks, three months, three years of my focusing on this software learning me? Add it to my gotcha shelf of you bought it, youre screwed and threw away your money because they dont take back opened software.

I love this. It is a huge revelation. I couldnt type due to a serious arm injury so got this w a feeling of desperation. I was able to compose a huge NIH grant (P50) using this software and a mouse w my good hand. I did not use the voice commands or ability to control the cursor or menus. It is not without bugs, Ive had a few crashes (but it recovers well), and of course it makes some errors, but I now oscillate between typing short things and dictating longer ones. This feels like the future. I would like to see cloud based storage of my user profile and some other glitches worked out, but this technology has already come of age and it will kill they keyboard in the next decade. In the near future keyboards will look like dot matrix printers or fax machines.

I will dictate this complete review using Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium 12. I purchased Dragon natural speaking premium 12 for two reasons. First, I wanted a product that would transcribe material from a digital recorder. Much of what I do is first recorded on a tape or digital recorder. I would then spend as much as an hour and a half to two hours transcribing the material. My keyboard skills are medium to good but I am in no way a 100 word per minute typist. Dragon natural speaking will transcribe an 1800 word document in less than four minutes, although the result is an 1800 word long. Once transcribed it now takes only 10 to 15 minutes to punctuate and format into paragraphs and sentences. The accuracy of the transcription is very good and is getting better as I train Dragon Natural Speaking. Secondly, I wanted a product that I could use for dictation purposes which is the hallmark of Dragon Natural Speaking. I have several volumes of handwritten material that I want to publish and with Dragon I can now transcribe that material with ease. I rated this product with four stars for one simple reason. The Viacom microphone included in the package did not work with my computer soundcard. I contacted tech support and was told that Nuance knew there was a compatibility problem with Realtec soundcards and that I needed a USB adapter. My research led me to finally purchase a Viacom adapter from the Nuance website which ended up costing me an additional $25 ($15 for the adapter, and $10 for shipping). If Nuance knew there was a problem with certain sound cards the adapter should have been included in the package with the headset as it is with the upgraded professional version. For those users with compatible gaming headsets or existing adapters you can add the final star to the rating. Overall, I am satisfied with this product and use it regularly to dictate new material and to transcribe recorded material. I have only scratched the surface of this products capability and anticipate continued satisfaction as I learn to use its many features.

I dictated an email message after the 15 minute initial training set up and it did about 90% accuracy or more. I was flat amazed. I dont dictate as well as I speak especially when Im reading the words I am dictating. If I did additional training it would produce much better accuracy. Im waiting for a version which automatically inserts punctuation and corrects grammar. This software is so advanced, Im predicting that day will be here soon. I use Logitech wireless H800 headsets as recommended in the list of qualified headsets. I have noisy fans, but the noise cancellation of the H800 eliminates the background noise. I have an IVY Bridge 3770K CPU with 8 GB of RAM. Im sure that helps a lot, too.

I can type fairly well, but thought by having this I could save a little time. WRONG. First Ill say that I dictated reports for 20 plus years and never had an office assistant complain about my dictation. I understand the commands to use, talk clearly, into the mic. I also took the time to train Dragon, and edit its mistakes. I use the provided headset in a quiet office. It still couldnt understand what I believe are easy things: wood stove not would stove, light bulb not white ball, etc. In the end, it takes me so much time to go back, locate all the errors, correct them, and reproof that Im spending twice the time I did without Dragon. So....if you can type at all, youre better off typing. This is not a time saver. It does however provide some entertainment reading its mistakes. No, its not abandoned Raj, its a band in the garage.

I bought this so that I could do less typing at work. When I first installed it, it hardly worked at all and I was really frustrated, but then I worked out that my laptops sound card wasnt good enough. Apparently this is extremely common (only 20% of laptops have a good enough sound card) so I highly recommend that other people check this before they buy. Its easily fixed though - either buy a USB adaptor for the headset provided in the box (for me this was AUD$30 including shipping from Nuances website), or buy a new USB headset (AUD$60 from a local store). I chose the new headset so that I didnt have to wait for the adaptor to be shipped from the US to Australia, and once I had that, it worked like a dream. Its made my work heaps easier - I definitely recommend it. As an aside, I was really impressed by how the software picks up on technical phrases. I work in a scientific field so I was worried it wouldnt understand the words that I use, but it scans your documents and sent emails before you start - it even knew naphthalene. However, I use it on my personal laptop in a meeting room at work, rather than at my desk in an open-plan office, because it doesnt deal well with background noise. Luckily this isnt a problem at my workplace.

Dragon naturally speaking does not recognize my computer sound card and microphone. It does not recognize any speech at this point. At best I am going to have to try and teach it my voice for hours on end to get it to work at all. I thought that this would be quick and easy to get it up and running, does not appear to be the case. Wish I could get a refund!

This review written by dragon. I talk it types. Very handy. This allowed me to keep my previous user files so right off the bat it got the words right. I talk a lot of property legal descriptions and am amazed it gets them right almost all the time. It even types numbers when I want numbers and text numbers when I want them. So it is very contextual and smart. Also it continues to learn and incorporate your style over time so it gets better and better as you use it.

I have used Dragon for a couple of years for dictation at work and find that it can greatly reduce my paperwork time. I bought the new version because my old one was becoming glitchy and I could not find the cd to reload the program. The only complaint that I have is that it does not work that well with my interface at work (EPIC) and so I will sometimes dictate it on Word and cut/paste the note into EPIC. Training can still be a hassle and when I am tired or sick I have more errors.

Having tried this a couple times since the very beginning lets say its came along ways!! A good product that has many options and does pretty well. If compared to other software over years I would say this is at the teenage stage and maturing toward adulthood :-) In a few more years it will be normal stuff!!!