Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

Its a interesting and useful piece of technology, however every piece of technology has its flaws. The headset works well for the most part, however there are a notable amount of times where the speech isnt recognized. Had a couple problems with text to speech as well.

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.

Okay, for those of you who have not read my review of DragonDictate for 3 Mac, I originally bought that piece of garbage and then discovered this marvel of technology. I cannot say in mere words, how unbelievably effective this software is. Right now I am speaking to my computer, and having grown up in New York, speaking rather fast. Nevertheless, the software keeps up with me and so far has made not one mistake in the transcription of my voice. How cool is that? When you start with this product, you MUST learn how to dictate. Being kind of an old guy, and having worked with secretaries who actually took shorthand, this is not a problem for me. For you young people out there who have no experience in dictation, this might require some time to get used to. Once you figure out exactly how to dictate, speaking clearly, enunciating, and speaking in a normal manner-no ums or you know-your writing will fly. So far Ive had to make one small correction, a spacing error and just in the sentence, it thought I said a spacious error, but that was my fault because I mumbled. And it took a nano second to correct. I still havent mastered all of the hundreds of commands available to control cursor position, move around the page, open web apps, and I havent tried it with Microsoft Excel, but I have used it with Microsoft Word 2007 and it works brilliantly. I have also obviously used it here, directly in the Amazon text box, and again it is working perfectly. I think that once I have mastered the commands designed for controlling the computer I will almost never touch mouse or keyboard again. Let me stress, there is a learning curve. But it is not bad. For anyone who has a problem typing or using a mouse-carpal tunnel syndrome or anything else similar-or anyone who just wants to forget about typing, dont hesitate, buy this product. Just remember that the faster your computer is, the more RAM you have, the greater processing power you have, the faster this product will work. I am using it right now on in Acer V5-I5 with 8 GB of RAM and it is working very well. I tried it on a cheaper Lenovo - I 3 processor equipped machine and, although I really like the new Lenovo, it was too slow so I returned it and got this. If you dont mind using a desktop, I would suggest that you build your own with a quad core and a boatload of RAM. It would probably be overkill, but at least you could try your hand at some cool gaming. Im not sure how well this product would work as a game controller but wouldnt that be awesome. Finally, Im not a great proofreader, in fact I suck at proofreading. I also cant spell worth beans. Maybe you can find a lot of mistakes in this document, but I cant, and if I really wanted to be perfect, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 will read the document back to you, mistakes and all, and you could fix it as you go. Once again, dont hesitate its worth every single penny. Postscript: I forgot to mention that the software comes with a pretty good headset, at least its pretty good if you computer recognizes it. I tried it on my Mac using the crappy Mac version of this software and it worked very well, but when I tried it in my Acer, it didnt work at al. l I then tried a Logitech USB headset that I had laying around and that sucked too. Finally, I was lucky enough to have a very inexpensive headset by Cyber Acoustics, that I got from I dont know where, and it is working perfectly. Several other reviews that I have read say that the headset is critical. That is absolutely true, but the headset doesnt have to be expensive. That said, I am planning to get a good Bluetooth headset for this thing and if any of you out there who own the software could give me a recommendation or two I would appreciate it. My Mac Version of Dragon came with a Plantronics Callisto and it sucked. (By the way the software recognized and correctly typed both Plantronics and Callisto without hesitation. And from those of you from Texas-I just live here-it knows how to write yall.

I had several issues with this product, When I finally got it to install it wont open on my laptop. I get an error that I dont have enough memory to operate it and I have over 50% of memory available. So I can tell you how well it works just that it wont. Not happy that it gives specs that it will work on my machine and now that I have it I cant use it...

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 tried this software out back when speech recognition was in its infancy and I was not impressed. Imagine having to spend nearly 20 hours to training your software. And then it was not portable. But now that smartphones and hands-free devices in cars can use speech recognition near flawlessly, I though it was time to give it another shot. WOW! What an improvement. The speech to text functionality is amazing. The command functions dont always work, but I prefer a more hands on approach when opening software or navigating my GUI. This product advertises portability, although I have yet to try it. I would highly recommend this product if you do a great deal of typing and want to be freed from your desk. Imagine walking around the room or house (depending on how good your wireless headset is, dont skimp on the headset purchase, youll regret it) all the while dictating a letter, article, or email. Who needs a treadmill desk when you can actually leave the computer and continue typing.

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.

works pretty well - every now and then will take some time to wake up if the microphone has been turned off for a long time, but other than that, works great. the speech recognition is incredible. using it with microsoft usb headset though, not the one that came with it.

So far its working really well. Granted I cannot compare it to anything else or earlier versions because I have never used any of them. As for me I have dyslexia and have become self-conscious of my ability to spell anything over the years.(Constantly using spell check or Google when spell check doesnt work in order to find definitions of a word) needless to say it has made it hard to function in a world filled with emails and Twitter accounts, or at least more time-consuming. Personally would not recommend a speech recognition program for a high school student or a child in grade school. (with a learning disability or no). For learning how to spell and type not to mention grammar is so important in this day and age.that I fear a speech recognition program would hinder their ability to do both in the long run. For there will be times when they will not have access to a speech recognition program or will have to communicate with pencil and paper.

The microphone which was included with the product is either junky or defective because the Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12 software reports it as not being good enough quality to get past the initial setup/configuration steps. I also had serious quality problems not being able to get it to transcribe recorded files even thought I followed the steps to train the software. The accuracy was horrendous. There are also some feature limitations which are not apparent or obvious on their website if you are a first-time user like myself. If you are already familiar with their past software there would probably be fewer surprises (although unless the older software works better than this one I doubt you would be upgrading anyway.