Nuance Dragon Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 (Old Version)

I read all of the reviews before buying this and the only reason why I did, in spite of the one star reviews, was because a fellow author highly recommended it to me. That said, I dont know what other people were doing, or what their computer systems are like, but this thing installed right on the first try. It took about an hour, granted, but Adobe Creative Suite takes longer than that! Its performed like a dream since installation. I dictated 1,000 words in 20 minutes with very few errors. (Thats impressive. I write fantasy.) If youre an author, and youre wanting to speed things along, I highly recommend this program. (Just make sure to buy the Blue Microphone Snowball with it. That makes a lot of difference.)

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.

I have used Dragon since version 8. It had been pretty hit and miss back in those days. Version 13 is pretty tight. I very rarely swear at it like I did in the old days. : ) I am a writer and it makes it a breeze to do the rough draft of stories. Intricate editing not so much. But for me that is a huge time saver. One big improvement is getting a new headset. WARNING. Just because you think a headset is good doesnt mean that it is good for Dragon. There is a great company to help with finding it because Nuance is no help here. I have had great experiences with KnowBrainer.com. They help handicapped people use Dragon to enhance their lives. KnowBrainer has a list of headset microphones that work the best with Dragon. For example I bought a set of Sennheiser headsets which are normally a great brand. Well they werent very good for Dragon. One down side is Nuance is not the best with support. Dragon software has been sold a few times. And sadly support has not improved with the new companies. I will say that it has been rare that I have needed support.

Firstly, dont purchase the disc + headset bundle. The software already comes with a headset included in the box, a fact which I discovered after ordering and receiving the bundle and ending up with an extra headset. So ordering the bundle will result in you receiving the software and the headset it comes with in one box, and another box with a second headset. That offer is quite deceiving. Despite being annoyed at spending a little extra money, I didnt consider it worth returning the extra headset since I got it all on sale for a decent price, and because I may end up needing a replacement headset at some point anyway. As for the speech recognition itself, its decent. Not as amazing as I was hoping; I do have to spend a little time correcting mistakes, and it also slows you down to have to speak the punctuation out loud. But this is the first speech recognition software Ive used, and Im betting as far as speech recognition goes, its good. The uses of the Home version are kind of limited because of it not being compatible with many programs, meaning it will not enter the text directly into said programs/emails/etc. for you. But it can still be used pretty much anywhere by putting the insertion point where you want the text, and then as you speak your speech will appear in Dragons dictation box, from which you can easily transfer it to your designated spot with a simple click of the Transfer button. So, I found that pretty cool. My main reason for getting Dragon is Im a transcriptionist and my hands tend to get tired and stiff from typing. I was hoping that me dictating and then editing would be at least as quick as me typing, as well as sparing my hands from strain, but so far, its not really been worth it due to the time it takes to continually transfer the speech from the dictation box into my program, which gets me behind from dictating the words from the audio Im listening to, so then I have to skip back the audio once the dictation box gets out of the way, plus edit any mistakes I see, and I actually find it easier to manually insert punctuation when I review each portion that I transfer rather than speaking all of the punctuation. Eventually I may be able to make it work out better, but so far, it slows me down a bit, so I only use it sometimes. Just figured Id explain that for anyone else considering this for transcription. But the speech recognition aspect is decent as long as youre willing to check for mistakes. There tend to be at least a couple or few mistakes per paragraph in my experience so far.

I write a weekly newspaper column and flash fiction for an on-line magazine. I can compose at the keyboard, but am equally comfortable with pen and paper. I was interested in this program to capture handwritten first drafts. I put off buying Dragon for years because of the expense and the many negative comments. Decided recently to try Dragon 13 Home and wish Id ignored the negative reviews sooner. Installed the program on an X220 ThinkPad running Windows 10. Did five minutes of setup and gave it a spin using the included mic. Sorry I waited so long. With no training, Im getting great results. Dictated a 980 word story. Had to correct five mistakes. Thats 99 percent accuracy. I have a bit of a raspy voice, so make an effort to enunciate clearly. Cant tell my speech rate, but Im dictating a darn sight faster than the 55 words a minute I can type. Even if my accuracy was considerably lower, I would still find Dragon useful because I usually do several rewrites and a final polish at the keyboard anyway. Am happy to have a pet Dragon to do my bidding.

For the average person, this would be a nightmare to install. There are NO installation instructions, not even so much as Insert CD in the drive and click on... One must go to the website to troubleshoot the problems. The first problem is that clicking on the Windows installer causes the disk to thrash. I tried this on two different computers running Windows 10 with the same result. What you have to do is ignore their FAQ entitled Program will not install and do the following: 1. Right click on the DVD drive. 2. Right click on Install. Thats it. Nuance could have saved me two hours of frustration had they simply included those instructions on the box or in the foldout reference manual. Also, do not use the optional splitter. Plug both the mic and the speaker jacks into their respective outlets. Once, I was able to execute what should have been a piece of cake implementation that was made needlessly difficult by Nuances terrible marketers/documenters, the software worked beautifully in its tutorial. Should anything change, I will update these comments.

Im NOT at all sorry I bought this. The concept is exciting. I will say that theres a lot more to it than meets the eye, though. Let me explain: Im 80+, long since retired, with stiff fingers, and some other issues. My learning curve has slowed down, and there is much to learn to make Dragon fully functional. However, I have had it up an running for about two weeks or so, and Im impressed. Im using it as a kind of overlay, within which I call up my email systems, Amazon, MS Word, and verbally have them do something for me on screen. Currently, Im playing around with transcribing into a recorder [Olympus-722-PC], thence to the Dragon mic. Its still a little weird to see what I say pop up on screen, though. I would add the most of the really negative responses were earlier versions, and for inadequate computer systems I have a 2.1 micropressor, and I thhink it is a bit slow. I upped my RAM from 3 to 6, and am having no discernable problem with speed of processing. [Im slow, too

VERY disappointed! As the leader in speech recognition software, I didnt even consider another software vendor. But for a vendor to put software like this into the marketplace that doesnt work install properly on a standard Windows laptop is criminal. After the first install, the program wouldnt work. I followed the instructions, deleted the software and reinstalled it. After 4 additional installations (and uninstalls), I finally gave up in frustration and called for support. Their live support contact information is not easy to find, and after navigating through pages of knowledgebase answers to questions, I was finally able to get their direct-customer support number. I spent 2 hours on the first call, while a very nice knowledgeable Filipino CSR helped me to test various issues with the registry file and other system software which I could not have done by myself. Language was a minor barrier but we were able to work through it. At the end of the two hours, the software still wouldnt work. As he said he would, he emailed further instructions as I was losing patience on being on the phone for 2 hours without a solution to my problem. I tried the subsequent solutions (some of which required that I change system parameters) and they still didnt work. Ive got about 12 hours invested in trying to get this software installed so I can begin to use it, and I still have no answer from Nuance as to what the issue is thats preventing the installation from completing effectively. They need to issue a patch, or otherwise let customers know that there are installation issues that might prevent the software working on a traditional mainstream Windows laptop (Toshiba Satellite).

I purchased this in 2015. It was working fine until my computer quit. Once the PC was repaired (new logic board) I had to reinstall all my software. When I reinstalled dragon the Serial number no longer worked. I called Nuance and they said since 13 is no longer supported I cannot activate it. THAT IS THEFT!

I reduced my review from 5 to 3 stars because it has so many problems and they dont fix it. I have to ctrl+alt+del and force stop it. There is no way to make it shut off. It has also stopped backing up my files and I dont know how to make it restart again. If they fix this stuff, I will change my review back to 5 stars. I doubt it..... I am actually using NaturallySpeaking to write this review. I had Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0 before this, and it did pretty good. But I am shocked and amazed, and how awesome this program is! It is so good it can even tell the difference between end, and and. I put in these little marks because I dont know what you call them. LOL! It can even get things like (egr) correctly. I think this must be what Google uses to do their voice searches. I am doing emails, web searches, reviews like this one, chat sessions, and pretty much anything else that needs typing. Since I type with three fingers on my left hand (because I have my set up for mouse keyboard gaming) I type so slow its pathetic. But I can do this review in about a minute! And thats pretty awesome!