Nuance Dragon Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 (Old Version)

I never liked typing, so I really like this software! Its not perfect, sometimes I have make corrections, I expected that, its still a lot less to type! Im very happy using Dragon, to write facebook messages and emails. I ordered the Disc and the microphone. There was an option to purchase a Koss microphone, the implication was that Koss is a better microphone. So I ordered that too. I have a laptop, and as it turns out, I dont need a microphone at all! I just speak and it types! This is wonderful, because both 2 ear microphones were very tight on my head. So now I have 2 headsets for sale!

I used to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking back in 2012 when I first started freelance writing. I found it to be extremely helpful and my accuracy was easily at 99.5% or higher. However, I stopped using it for some reason. But, Im back at it again. I picked up the 13.0 edition, hoping that it would work with Windows 10, and it has not had any problems at all. I did a little accuracy training, and now this thing is quite accurate. I write anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 words per day using DNS and have been doing so for the past month or so. I write faster and better now that I am actually saying the sentences out loud, as opposed to typing them out and hoping they flow well during the editing process. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to preserve their hands and/or increase their productivity.

EDITED_It is working now. It took a total of 6 hours and deleting and reinstalling it three times for it to finely work. Good product just way to difficult to get to work. I suggest 1 it needs to take less then 4 gb of space and it needs to load faster. I think this product could be better. IT IS NOT WORKING. After five hours of fighting with this it is not working. My mic works. My mic works on the computer. I hear my self from the mic. I go through the dang profile thing and when it says to test your mic and I go to turn on Dragons button it stays red and not green. It will not work.

I am a Computer Tech and I use this for emails and creating detailed Trouble Tickets. Mostly this is pretty good, but sometimes it misunderstands me. As I said, I am a PC Tech. I can be doing Tickets for clients and say Installed a Printer. Instead of the typed message, Windows opens the New Printer Wizard. Once I said Rebooted the PC and DNS almost rebooted my PC. Ive tried turning off the Commands portion, but that does restrict the functionality of the PC. BTW, it does not type curse words. You still have to delete the gibberish, but at least it is not profane. :)

I am writing this review using DSN 13. I had a very hard time downloading the software onto Windows 8.1. Thus the reason why I am giving it four stars. When I tried to install I kept getting a message saying the installation was interrupted and unable to finish. I searched on the Internet for fix actions and found one that worked for me. Create a guest account on your computer and install DSN 13 to that guest account, it took it a little while to start the download but it worked on the guest account and Im able to use it on my primary account. This is the link I found the fix action in http://nuance-community.custhelp.com/posts/c5c9614e18 hopefully this will work for some of you that are having a hard time downloading the software. Also on a side note I never had any previous Dragon software before this. The software itself I give 5 stars! I have had no issues with it after the install.

Ive been a happy user of earlier versions but after my laptop updated itself to windows 10, I found myself forced to buy version 13.0. Purported to be a great improvement, I was sold, but Ive not yet gotten it to work. After the install, I went through the microphone preparation and launched Word. The supplied headset was used. Not a single word was understood. Nothing. Frustrated, I eventually did a clean install only to get an error message that some training directory could not be renamed. Installed again without trouble. Still didnt understand a single word. Switched mics. Nope. Decided to use my wifes brand new i-7 laptop with 16GB. Installed fine but still didnt understand a single word. I reached out to tech support and got a couple suggestions. No good. Reached out again and got a suggestion to check the settings. After 3 laptops, 3 mics, and multiple attempts at setting default mic, sound card settings, hardware acceleration, etc, Ive given up. Fortunately, I found an old laptop and installed version 12.0 on it. It works flawlessly. My new laptop? I use Windows speech recognition. While not as robust as Dragon, it isnt half bad. My only regret is that I tried to upgrade to new and improved. Im beginning to think there might be an error on my disc. Nothing but trouble for me.

So many ways to dislike this software. First of all, it took over an hour to install; but I guess I should feel lucky as, when I read the experiences of others, many were not able to install it at all. Next, setting up the microphone was a challenge. The software came with a new headset/microphone combo so when setting it up with the software, there was an option for Dragon Remote Microphone or something like that. There was no explanation that that option pertains to an Android app which allows your tablet to act as a microphone, consequently I wasted a lot of time and finally found the answer to that problem by Googling it several times. Tried setting it up for my wife who is vision-challenged, thus her display is set to high-contrast. This resulted in some of the setup dialog boxes being invisible. Wouldnt you think that this software is likely to be used by someone with vision problems and design it to work with high contrast displays? Anyway, once we figured that out, the next challenge one faces is that of having to read documents of 5000 words, yes FIVE THOUSAND WORDS, or so to train it. The Microsoft speech recognition software that comes with Windows allows you to train it as you go, reading as much or as little at a time as you desire, a much more user-friendly way to go. Also maddening is the fact that there are dead links within the Dragon software. For example, in the training texts, a link appears above stating something like Click here to learn how to improve visibility of the text. Guess what? You click the link and absolutely nothing happens. I always thought the Microsoft Speech Recognition software was pretty good but my wife insisted she wanted to try Dragon as she had heard so many good things about it. I set up a profile for myself and trained it; so far I havent found anything it could do that the Microsoft software couldnt do as well, so I would just as soon have saved the 50 bucks or so that I spent on Dragon Naturally Speaking as a gift for my wife.

Would not recommend this software to someone with a southern accent - I could not get product to understand my words no matter how many times I tried the setup feature that should teach the program my voice. Im fairly decent with computers but this is one of the few items Ive had to return to Amazon. It did come with a nice headset which impressed me, so Ill give it 2 stars instead of one. I felt bad that it didnt work since it would have made my life much easier. The software install and setup seemed easy and software was easy to navigate. Just a caution - once installed it seemed to make some of my other programs open slower. Update 12/1/19: I returned this software for a refund a week after purchase. However, I really needed a voice to text software and ended up buying the pro edition (even though I feared it wouldnt be any better). It was a struggle to get the software loaded but I called Dragon support and they helped. Turns out the pro version works great for me. Im using a low-cost USB mic that had high ratings (not a headset).

Need to buy some other item for it to work.