Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

I have been reading about Dragon Naturally Speaking software for some years now, but have been reluctant to take the plunge primarily because of the seemingly large number of negative reviews surrounding it. I recently convinced myself, however, to just go ahead and try it out and see what MY opinion of it would be. Its been kind of a complicated road but, in the end, has finally worked out well. First, I made the mistake of ordering the software directly off of the Nuance site since it appeared that I would be saving $30 by doing so. From the description on the Nuance site, it appeared that there would be a headset included with the purchase. Not being a terribly bright fellow, I bought it only to discover that (1) it was for a download only and that (2) no mic-headset was included. It took quite a while to initially download the program and there was a lot of futzing about getting it installed; not very smooth at all. But eventually, I got it to work. Since I didnt have a headset-mic or even a stand-alone mic to use, I simply used my webcam mic. That worked okay, but while the results were very surprisingly good, there were a number of mistakes which was well short of the advertised 99% accuracy mark. I accepted this since I was using a mic that was not really intended for this kind of situation. Now heres the level of my stupidity: I kept thinking that the headset (which, as previously mentioned was described as being included) would be shipped to me. I saw nothing to indicate that this was indeed the case so I emailed Nuance customer support for the answer to which they responded back to me in about 2 days. A number to call was provided to me to call. I was told by Nuance CS that no headset was in fact included. I asked for a refund, deciding to re-order using Amazon instead. This is what I should have done in the first place. Getting the refund has been a far more lengthy wait than seems necessary. When I ordered DNS through Amazon. I also ordered the Andrew NC-181VM USB mic-headset since these received generally high praise from a number of reviewers for use with DNS (see my separate review on these). Now, after that lengthy spiel, on to Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12: In a word, Amazing! This is the stuff of sci-fi made real. Coupled with the Andrea headset, and after doing only the preliminary training, DNS worked almost flawlessly right out of the box. I havent yet (and probably never will) scientifically assessed the actual accuracy of DNS, but if it isnt the advertised 99%, its pretty darn close. Thats been my experience so far, at least. I still have a lot to learn and remember about some of the voice commands that you can use, and especially some its more esoteric abilities as far as controlling programs and such, but so far Im completely impressed with what DNS can do. I was concerned because of the several negative reviews about Premium 12 being less than some previous version or another. I honestly cant address that and, quite frankly, its now become completely irrelevant to me since Premium 12 has met and exceeded any expectations I had of it. It just flat works and it works amazingly well. If some previous version somehow worked better for some other person for whatever reason, more power to them. My only objection to some of those opinions is when they attempt to prevent the purchase of Premium 12 based on their objections. I think it is perfectly acceptable to state ones own experiences and biases about a product, but quite another to block the purchase of that product or tool that I believe many others if not most would find perfectly acceptable and useful without having to resort to some outdated and perhaps less supported version of the product. Im all for fair and reasonable criticism of a product, but some sense of reality needs to enter into our opinions. Which brings me to my criticisms of Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12. DNS is not without its flaws. The installation process, even with the CD was somewhat on the kludgy side. First, it was on the lengthy side, but that is okay with me, except that during this lengthy installation process I received at some point mid-way through installation some kind of error message that I didnt understand that seemed to indicate there was some kind of installation failure and told me something had not completed successfully. I thought Oh, great....Now Ive got either buggy software or Im going to have to try to start over again. But once I clicked the error message off, installation proceeded on happily and finally finished. And then, of course there was the whole registration process to go through (actually, I had to enter the same information--serial #, etc--at least twice) before I could actually start using it and tackle the preliminary voice training sessions. Since there was that installation hiccup along the way, I thought that something was surely going to prevent the program from running or cause some other bump along the road, but it hasnt happened yet, so I guess all is well in spite of the nagging feeling that something might be missing that needs to be there. In spite of the lengthy and somewhat convoluted installation process, I can still easily justify the 5 Stars I have given it. In the big picture of the world of software, this has to be one of the giants along with being, perhaps, even a potentially life-changing tool for many people for many reasons. All I really know and really care about now, however, that DNS Premium 12 is running and seems to be running flawlessly. The amazing thing about this incredible tool is that it tracks very rapidly. Im a pretty fast typist and I initially thought that I could probably type faster than what DNS could keep up with. Not so. I can start blabbering at a pretty good clip and DNS seems to hang right in there with me, even though I have to pause my flow to insert the punctuation, etc as I rattle on. The main catch here is that you have to have your thoughts pretty much under your belt already before speaking. If you are halting and stopping and kind of fumbling around as you speak, DNS doesnt handle that all that well. That is one advantage of typing; you can pause and think about what you want to say at any point in the flow without everything getting all hung up and bumfuzzled. With DNS, you will find yourself doing more corrections if that is the case. I really dont know how many people out there might actually need Dragon Naturally Speaking. I think if you are a troubled or slow typist, this would be an absolute boon to you. If you are a lousy speller, DNS handles spelling corrections extremely well, usually on the fly. I am neither of these things; I am both a fast typist and a pretty good speller most of the time. Nevertheless, I still find DNS an incredible tool. I must say that it may take me a while to find ways for me to use it and truly justify its purchase. But being the geek that I am, I will do my best to find a way to put it to good use. So, for right now, I stand extremely impressed with what I regard as among the more useful innovations in the software realm. Just as an aside: before investing in DNS, I did try out the built-in Speech Recognition feature of Windows 7. It works fairly well and is impressive to a degree in its own right. In my opinion, however, it doesnt hold a candle to DNS and quite frankly, suffers from too many weaknesses that would render it too frustrating for me to use for most purposes. It just doesnt offer nearly the accuracy or sophistication of DNS. In conclusion, I can highly recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12 to anyone seriously interested in getting their feet wet using speech to text translation. I hope you will find it as amazing as I have.

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.

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.

I have only been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for a few weeks now, but I am thoroughly satisfied with it. It was very easy to install and the training period was easy to get through. I have been using it for a variety of tasks. The primary reason for which I purchased it was to be able to dictate manuscripts for books and I was surprised at how easy and accurate it is to use. In fact, this review is being dictated through that same program. The number of mistakes that the program makes is far fewer than I had anticipated. Quite a few years ago I had used an earlier version of Dragon and was satisfied with it at the time, but there is no comparison between that version and the present one as far as ease-of-use and accuracy are concerned. I am very much satisfied with what I received.

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.

I first tried using Dragon Naturally Speaking more than 10 years ago. Back then I received an earlier version of the program as part of a give away software bundle when I purchased a computer. I gave up trying to use the program because it did not function at all with my computer. For years after that experience I considered voice recognition programs as useless. Recently I experimented with the voice recognition features on my Android cell phone. The voice recognition features worked so well I did some checking to see who wrote the program. I learned the Android voice recognition program was from Nuance, the company that now owns Dragon. Because of the positive experence with my cell phone I decided to buy Dragon 12.0 a month ago. Well the hardware and software have obviously advanced and the Dragon 12.0 program really works on my dual core computer. In a short time the program has become an invaluable tool in the writing I do for my job. This program is a game changer for me and I highly recommend it.

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.

I have dyslexia so when I type I miss words and invert characters. DNS is an answer but has flaws. It interferes with Excel 2003 Numbers Key Pad, it inserts periods randomly where grammatically they should be commas or starts new sentences without any rational. Even with these flaws job completion is still 2-3 times faster.

I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking for years, starting with version 6, and, while the early versions left something to be desired, they worked pretty well. I bought Dragon Version 10 and used it for a couple of years and was very happy with it. When I got a new computer running Windows 7 my Dragon 10 would not run so I upgraded to 12. What a mistake! While it does translate speech into text it is so irritating to use that I have gone back to my old computer and version 10. Since many words sound alike (isle/aisle, to/two/too, etc.) the program will sometimes make a mistake. With my old version I could select the word and say spell that and the program would let me make a correction, either by choosing the right word from a list or actually spelling the word on the keyboard and training the program to understand it. With this one about 90% of the time it refuses to work. If I say spell that the program comes back with spell letter S, deletes the word and inserts an S. Other times it will say spell bracket and insert a bracket. Many times it refuses to do anything and just sits with the cursor blinking. I am using the same microphone I used before and have even tried a wireless USB mic with the same result. If you go to the Nuance website there are a bunch of FAQs, but no easy way to talk to customer support. Maybe version 13 is better but i am not about to plunk down another $100 to find out. I wish I could recommend it but I cant.

Started using Dragon over 10 years ago when as a court stenographer I needed a method to help with my typing. It took time to train the software and it worked pretty good. Over the years I upgraded to Dragon Level 10 and it had improved significantly. I bought the 12 Premium and it was not an improvement in my view, and recently purchased the 12 Professional and it still does not meet my standards. Simple words continue to be a problem when you dictate an, you get and, dictate on and you one, and on and on and on. I wonder how it operates with those who are neither as articulate nor enunciate clearly? Dragon gets away with it madness because its the only club in town, but its customer service really suffers because there is none and companies that depend upon computers to interact with human beings as their only line of resolving problems with their product will eventually fail. Dragon sucks every penny it can from its consumers by charging outrageous fees for live tech help when the free time ends (and thats when the system fails due to some software problem). Those who are physically challenged cannot find an alternative source, and I pray one will arise soon.