Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

If you are willing to spend some time on the training and getting the program used to your voice, its well worth it. It allows me to enter all kinds of information from a document into a spreadsheet, for example, without having to do that look down, read entry, look up, tab and type, look down, make sure the right thing went in the right box. Im a fast typist and I do a lot of typing, so sometimes its just fun to give my hands a rest and let Dragon do some work for me. The only downsides I find is that it still cant always keep up with me and it does have a couple of accent recognition issues, but other than that, its a fun and useful product.

Im still learning it and its still learning my voice but already it relieves a major headache for me transcribing my notes or just plain dictating. I do have to go back and fix errors but its still faster than typing myself from scratch. Although there are tutorials, I wish there was live tech support on specific issues. For example, how to teach it the difference between spelling out paragraph or period and performing the function. Its a tremendous time-saver, I can dictate in about 3-5 minutes what would take me 15 minutes to transcribe. I love this product.

I received my Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium 12 a week ago and struggled with it at first. To make a long story short, the whole problem was the microphone on the headset that was included with the software. Since I purchased a better microphone, I have had absolutely no problems at all using Dragon. My advice to anyone who is having trouble with the software is to try it first with a better microphone before you give up. The software seems to be an excellent product. Nuance Communications would be better off sending no microphone then sending a lousy one, which makes people think that the software is impossible or difficult to use.

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.

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.

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.

Takes a fair amount of time to learn how to use, but is good with text such as email or word processing. Does not fit my needs for use with spreadsheet programs or statistical packages (Excel, SPSS, R, etc). Quirky operating process, for example when I first opened it, the microphone will receive the first sentence I say, and then just not accept any more, so I have to turn off the microphone, and then re-turn it on, and it seems to work--why? Another irritation is that for some applications it will pop up a dictation box and record your dictation, but about one out of every five times, when you hit the transfer button to send it to the application you had the active cursor in, the text just goes out into the ether, yes, it disappears, and then you have to start all over again. My arm is in a sling for a few months, so it makes a big difference for emails and wordprocessing documents, but beyond that does not help with the majority of my work.

Ive used several previous versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking, but needed a new one for my most recent laptop. I had read negative reviews about the installation process for Premium 12, but didnt have any trouble at all. The software installed immediately, taking time to handle updates, which is to be expected. I followed the steps to set up my profile, quickly did the training, and was ready to go. I then dictated a completely new document to see how this version would work work for me out of the box. The results were near perfect. Keep in mind that I already knew many of the commands, and how to work with Dragon Naturally Speaking. I think it takes a bit longer for a first time user to be up and running, since there is a bit of a learning curve.

All the advertising and videos in this made it seem like this was a easy to use, user-friendly product. Its not overly technical, but its not as easy as they make it seem. Also, so far it has been terribly inefficient and inaccurate. I bought this product with the hope of improving my efficiency. However it seems a lot of work is needed upfront to get this working, and at the moment its time I dont have. So it is currently sitting in the box. Waste of money.

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.