Nuance Dragon Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 (Old Version)

I purchased in order to do academic writing--reading source material into the computer for later reference is much faster than propping up a book and typing it in. It is a memory hog though. With 4 GB memory, I find that I need to shut down everything but this and Word in order for it to operate acceptably. There still are a few things about it that bug me, but for the price it is a good buy. It comes with a headset, which I did not know, so I bought a bundle with a headset. You dont need to. In fact, the bundled headset didnt even work, so I sent it back.

Ive been a Dragon user for years, so - when the new release came out - I purchased it and upgraded. It has been a disappointment -- the new Dragon bar at the top of the screen expands whenever I scroll near it, and I find the software is a lot less responsive online (I grade papers in Google Classroom, and the new version has a very difficult time recognizing online documents as text fields). After a few frustrating hours of trying to make it work, I uninstalled and tried to roll back to version 12. Unfortunately, I needed to then do a clean install and cant find the disk. I went to Nuance, figuring since I registered the product I should be able to download a clean copy and reinstall but they have no download area, and wanted me to send them ten bucks for a replacement disk. So, looks like Im moving over to Google voice to text... a real shame, after some six years of using Dragon.

There is a physical defect in the program disks. Amazon replaced the original order that had the same problem. The hole in the disk is slighly reduced in size by a thin rim of plastic. This blocks the insertion of the spindle on some drives. This can be visualize byoverlaying another disk where the extra rim is evident. By scraping this plastic the disk can then be read. An additional problem is present for MSN Browser users using MSN mail. If the microphone headset has a USB connection and is turned on it wil crash the MSN Browser when the email writing window is open. Unfortuately this is a one of the many of the Browsers problems. It does not appear the occur when the headset is pluged into the sound jacks.

I purchased 13.0 because 12.5 dose not work with Windows 10. I tried to install 12.5 when I got my new computer and it wouldnt install. I called support at Nuance. Sorry does not work w W-10. Dont you have an update to make 12.5 work w W-10? No you have to buy 13.0. Grrr! I purchased 13.0. This program is very time consuming to install. Finally got it installed along with my profile from 12.5. Make sure to save your voice profile if you are upgrading. There is a huge learning curve with this program. But after training it recognizes most words. I use it mostly for word dictation. I dont try to dictate the commands. Way too confusing. It is a great help in doing my rough drafts very quickly.

Had some serious stability problems with version 11.0 when it worked it worked GREAT but would do things unbidden and lost data so stop using it -Have not used version 13 much but Dragon seem to have cured the stability problems of 11.0 - Controls / pull downs / commands are different and will probably get used to them with more practice - Still cant get out of the habit of backing up on up three different files every few lines and then having to reread EVERYTHING each time because of problems with 11.0 which sometimes would make a change to a document file which would go unnoticed (some times working on page 20 and unbidden change occurred on page 1 !) and if backed up on only one file errors picked up after a back up were sometimes irrecoverable

The ballots still out on This software. It doesn’t like learning my cuss words very well but overall not a bad product. Speeds up my typing and I’m really learning how to use the correction functions. I don’t have much of an accent but I feel sorry for somebody that has a southern drawl or other accent because some of the words I say her way out of the park but when I backspace it seems to clear up when I talk slower. I think it’s worth it worth the priceEasy to install just watch out for COM problems see my review. I had the external microphone in my laptop microphone down at the same time and it was giving me an error so make sure you go in your control panel on your computer and turn off your internal microphone if you have one otherwise this joker will jack you up ha ha. They had such pretty tight but the microphone works good

I have been using Dragon Naturally Speaking for years. Over the years, most cell phones, iPhones and Androids have automatically come with constantly improving voice to text apps, but not Windows. Dragon soft has a learn period that cell phones dont seem to need, but Dragon soft has a much greater features list. For straight up composition, Naturally Speaking performs well, allowing you dictate a document with very few errors. In a direct test against Kindle, I found that the supplied Kindle app actually performed better fewer errors, provided you dictated with enunciated with sharp clear speech. That is the first place where Naturally Speaking differs from cell phone speech apps. Naturally Speaking learns your voice, slur and mumble patterns, and allows you to dictate in patterns that are not clear, sharp dictation. Secondly, Naturally Speaking uses quick voice activated boo-boo and editing commands: erase that, highlight that, and sentence removal commands. Personally, I still prefer to get it right the first time, so I cant help but try to enunciate well the first time. The ONLY reason that I dont give it 5 stars is that there are SO MANY commands, that sometimes (OK, rarely) you accidentally hit a command in normal dictation. It can be a little overwhelming. Nevertheless, I dont know what I would do without this program.

It really is worth buying

I have been using Dragon for over 10 years starting with version 11 and version 13 and when I tried to upgrade to version 15 and import my profile to the new version, I found out thats not possible. So I have over 10 years of specific terminology and medical terms that I have to start all over to rebuild since they didnt bother to make it possible to retain the old profile. Im sorry to have upgraded – shouldve stayed with version 13

I certainly would not recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. First of all it was hard to get installed. I even called technical support for help and they had me download the program to install and it still wouldnt work. After many hours of trying to install it, it finally installed. However, it kept hanging up. It wouldnt even run long enough to go through any training for it. The training feature of this program gave the warning that the training program was not compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The program also gave warnings about a third party program interfering with it and I could never find any other program running. After searching on line for a solution I finally tried using the voice recognition feature in Windows. Windows voice recognition works wonderfully. It does everything that Dragon NaturallySpeaking says it would do and and takes dictation very fast. Naturally you have to give it some training as you would with any voice recognition program. I am writing this review with Windows voice recognition. It keeps up with me wonderfully gives me tremendous control of my computer through voice commands. No, I do not recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. I just wasted a lot of money which I cannot afford to do. I see no reason not to use the Windows voice recognition program when it works so well.