Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 (Discontinued)

To everyone who is considering purchasing Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13.0, I say you should pick it up. Now, this is not coming from somebody who is an expert at the product, as I've only been using it for a couple of hours now. Nevertheless, this is more or less the same experience you may have showed you pick up a copy for yourself. The version that I picked up is the physical shipment. For a total shipping cost of $10, I received my package in two days. I ordered on a Friday night and received it just after 12 PM on Sunday. THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!! I know some of you may be considering the downloaded version but I highly recommend just picking up the physical shipment. It will also come with a headset which you may find useful. The software installed smoothly and works exactly as advertised. My particular system is a Windows 10 64-bit system. I also have 16 Gigs of RAM. The software has a reputation for consuming a lot of resources and I've generally confirm this. However, my laptop which was built in 2013 is more than enough to handle the software. If you're using a system it's only a couple of years old, you probably won't have any trouble running the software either. I am also using a MikTek Pro Cast SST microphone for Dragon to pick up. (I couldn't get the included headset to work with my particular computer however I believe this is something that is isolated to my computer and may not be an issue for you.) There is a tutorial that will help you understand how to use the software once you install it and started. It's a fairly good tutorial, nevertheless I do recommend following some YouTube videos if you need additional information. I'm just learning to use the system myself but overall I find that it's fairly intuitive. It does get a bit annoying to have to verbalize your punctuation such as the word "Period". This is something that I'll have to get used to, which is a matter of time. I also find that it is very tempting to have Dragon NaturallySpeaking do all of the work for you. I find that I tried to utilize Dragon to do all of the editing and to change all of the words. Knowing when I should do the editing and when I should tell Dragon to edit is something that you will have to figure out on your own. I knew this going into the product and I had decided that the best course of action was to be cooperative with the product and take an interactive approach. So far this does seem to be the best approach. I certainly hope that this review makes sense to you. It was entirely conducted with Dragon naturally speaking, except were a couple of corrections were necessary and I found that it was easiest to make them manually. Overall I'm very pleased with the accuracy – – I happen to have a Midwestern accent which is a little bit drier and may be more accurate for the software itself. I highly recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13.0 Premium. I'm looking forward to using this for all of my blogging and product creation needs. I think you'll find that it's an incredible product as well. Thank you for your time.

I began using speech recognition three years ago because of the volume of research and writing that I do. The reviews for Dragon NaturallySpeaking compared to Windows speech recognition then seemed to concur that WSR was just as good as anything from Nuance. I have always found Windows speech recognition a tad frustrating in the number of errors in recognition results and the poor microphone volume control. The add-on macros are a nice addition to WSR. With the release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13, I decided to try it to see if it would perform better than the built in Microsoft option. The installation was painless as well as the initial setup. There is no training required to get started, and the accuracy was surprisingly high without this requirement; however, I have since read one of the training documents because of the amount of text that I have to dictate every day, I wanted to ensure greater accuracy. Since purchasing DNS13 on August 11, 2014 I've dictated just over 6,000 words; out of curiosity I did track corrections that had to be made, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking's accuracy came in at 99.2%. My VXi TalkPro UC2 microphone is working very well with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, much better than it was with Windows speech recognition. The product integrates well with Microsoft Word and Outlook, but all of the default hotkeys must be changed otherwise you cannot create formulas in Excel. It is unfortunate that after all of these years that people have requested integration with Microsoft OneNote, the only thing DNS 13 can manage is the ribbon; text cannot be dictated directly into the program. One thing I do miss about Windows speech recognition is the add-on macros tool where I could build routine formatting commands. I use this extensively in Microsoft OneNote; for example, I would dictate a line and then voice a command that would select the entire line, set the font point size, set tags, and then enter a double line feed. If you try to dictate into some web forms, such as Amazon's search field, the Internet Explorer Full Text Control browser add-on does crash Dragon NaturallySpeaking (according to the DNS and Windows event logs), and corrupt all right-click context menus in Windows 7; a reboot is required to clear up the problem. With Firefox, the browser add-on simply does not work. There is a plethora of commands available in DNS 13 to suit whatever level of keyboard or mouse interaction you would rather use your voice to control. I particularly like being able to search the web when something comes to mind, the "search the web" command is great. Overall, for me, the product is better than Windows speech recognition, and I can continue to work around the browser add-on crashing, missing Microsoft OneNote integration, and lack of custom formatting commands as quality recognition is my number one need. For now, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 gets four stars; address the missing OneNote integration and the browser add-on crashing, and I might bump it up to five stars.

If the haters and the lovers become equal-a wish might come true; Dragon or nuance managers will hire talented, quality management; then retire. Wondering if, management is under reacting and then overacting, as well as tinkering. For long-term use, is not comforting to imagine management does not know what they're doing. I came back and read through the very generous folk's that gave this program 4 stars. The four-star people are extremely generous, because after struggling with Dragon until 13 begin to function; they believed and they gave. So it's fair to say there might be 70 or more warning remarks, to the 59-I-do-love-Dragon. Also five-star people have complaints...(I was a little aggravated with Dragon beginning with version (4 ?), however I did "love" Dragon until I had a problem with hooker, and now with 13 not installing). Only obsolete, Adobe products such as Flash, and Shockwave work with Dragon 11.5. Not being able to update is aggravating, and then more aggravation. At the beginning of my "love" for Dragon, I fed Dragon fine microphones. During earlier years some were good, satisfying,and inexpensive microphones(Discontinued). However Dragon's diet also included a variety of Bluetooth mics, including a CS 50, as well as computer upgrades($300 and $400 microphones do not make sense). Unless convinced that 12.5 is better, I'm going back to 11; then using the Dragon money to buy a good replacement microphone (Quality is important; however, costs will be less than $175. $300 doesn't make sense). If I'm lucky, somewhere I have a stored copy of 11.5 update. It just might be, many 4 stars and the 5 stars people are new users: Not many satisfied users said they upgraded from D S 11 or 12, so of primary importance is whether or not Dragon 13 is faster and more accurate than Dragon 11 and 12. Now my question is, if I pay the aggravation-price required for Dragon 13 to work, is 13 much faster and more accurate than D S 12.5, as well as, faster and more accurate than my 11.5. Additional features and integration might be a fine thing, if and only if the basic functions of the program works without hassle. Read the advertisement: "The fastest and most accurate way to interact with your computer; Dragon dramatically boosts your personal productivity and helps you realize your full potential" So carefully worded... "Who will help me make the bread"...; without a nuance of remorse that it is obvious, "not I says" the Dragon. Is it true, where production is driven by perceived price and by gimmicky sales, quality falls, the price rises, and the potential for greater profit will declined. Oh well, this is the age of the TV sharks. The Complaint: and, Why bother scribbling here? At five o'clock in the morning, is dark and cold outside . I've had Dragon versions since the year 2000 and maybe before. Wanted 13 to eliminate hooker... problems. Not worth the trouble to look up the exact Hooker name. So, 13 did not install: DVD player didn't recognize the disk (Cheap, low-end junk disk). It might be that my relatively new laptop's also deserves complaining about the DVD system; however,is a separate matter and that DVD usually function. Copied to USB with a high-end computer. 13 did not install. This message,." Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 set up requires elevation. Please run setup.exe from the installation source". After reading the reviews here I decided to send this crap back and simply use the older 11.0 version. Is marginally okay except for the problems with hooker... Chances are, will eventually be able to install Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. But why! Why do we bother to give good money to the thoughtless and to those who could care less. More wasting time complaining t o the uncaring ear, oh well, this began again at five in the morning: To create this remarkable program required an internal culture with extreme dedication to perfecting the basic engine. Those good people could not be successful without attention given to eliminating defects. The result, we who about to die because we can not type 90 words a minute, love Dragon. It is known; Dragon works better on faster machines, and the microphone is extremely important, so I own several computers purchased, because I imagine Dragon would work better... Conceptually correct, wrong in reality :-( Back to intent questions: Alternative to management retirement: Back to the Basics. Study the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Nope. Taylor does not emphasize that all problems are caused by upper management's lack of ability to see the forest. There are convoluted 100-year newer ideals. Hum... Nope. Where management systems have limited insight, W. Edward Deming did get to the point with a figurative, decent upper management butt kicking.

I bought version 13 which came with a headset that uses line-in jacks, not USB connection to the PC. It also came with an adapter to take the 2 jacks down to 1 for the PC's 1 receptor. I could not get my computer to recognize the headset or hear my voice, so I called Nuance tech support after trying everything I could think of. Tech support told me to get an adapter from a jack to a USB plug in. I went to Office Depot with the headset and the salesperson did a better job of connecting the jacks to the adapter that came with the headset, and I got it to work briefly. Once it was working the software did a good job of voice recognition. However, it stopped working and I ended up buying a USB plug adapter. That didn't help at all. I called Nuance tech support again who did have me try one change - using the original jack adaptor, but it still did not hear my voice. The answer finally that tech support gave me was that I should purchase a USB headset from Nuance because the headset they sold me with the software won't work. Somehow I don't think I should be paying them for more equipment because what they are selling doesn't work. He did say they would give me a discount, but refused to give me a "complaint" reference number so that I could refer customer service to that. Also free tech support will end for version 13 on Jan 3, 2020, but if this is how tech support functions, I'm not sure you would be losing much there. I'm not paying them more money. I will buy a USB headset elsewhere, then thats it.

I have very good diction, yet struggle with this software (I record books for the blind and dyslexic). I'm running the latest version, claims no patches are required, on Windows 7 on a Toshiba laptop with eight gigs of memory. The software is very slow, it takes a very long time to catch up. The instructions tell you that you do not have to wait for it to catch up, but I found that is incorrect. If I do not wait then I will find the text added all over in different parts of the paragraph, for example, in an email, and not in the order that I said them. There is something I say, still haven't figured out what it is, that triggers the software to open up my email client and start marking all of my emails as read, or important, or deleting or archiving them. Once it starts, there is no stopping it because the command is in the buffer. I have done lots of the training exercises for teaching the software how to understand my voice and my annunciation and pronunciations. Also, please note, that the tutorial does not run. I had to get other people who use the software to teach me some of the basics. The tutorial hangs about five or six slides in, right after telling me how to turn on and off the microphone. I see this reported on the Dragon website, with no responses from tech support (other than saying change the resolution of your computer, which I tried, and also tried removing from the docking station, and I still was unable to complete the tutorial). The software is also not very good with technical things, like using UNIX via SSH terminals. I cannot get it to type 'ls' it continually types instead 'ssssssssss' (as it thinks I am saying "spell s"), no matter how many times I tried to train the Vocabulary Editor. An ergonomics person who was observing me use the software noted it was very slow, but he had not tried this latest version, but that my system more than that the basic requirements and that it should be running faster. I constantly have to retrain it for words, as it seems if you do not forcefully save your profile at the end of the day, all of your training you put in there will be deleted. Also, when it comes time to set on the computer Dragon takes a very long time to save your profile (several minutes). As a software engineer, I believe there should be an auto save feature that runs throughout the day on this. The tool also keeps wanting to do some task that will take 45 minutes, which I would not be able to work during that time. I don't know why some of these processes can't be done in the background, or in shorter increments. If I could schedule it, I could time it for when I was in a meeting and not using the software, but it seems to come up whenever I'm trying to shut down Dragon at the end of the day. Also the lack of native support for Mozilla Thunderbird is fairly appalling. The dictation box is very slow, but I have to use it when I'm writing emails or it will constantly misspell names and technical terms. I don't know why the names and technical terms can be spelled correctly the first time in the dictation box, it's almost like the tool is trying to punish me for using a non-native application. Everything works fine in Firefox browser, which comes from the same organization as Thunderbird. The dictation box does not work with putty terminals, used for connecting to UNIX systems over a secure protocol (SSH). I generally use UNIX as my default desktop, but had to switch to Windows to use the software and I expected better performance on top of Windows operating system. As best I can tell, there is also a severe memory leak in this tool. I have to restart it about once a day or my entire system hangs. Dragon will also hang whatever application I'm attempting to use a few times a day (whether that be Firefox, command line, or Thunderbird). Please forgive any typos, I tried to find and fix them all, but I did write this review using the software from Dragon.

My Windows 8.1 Dragon Naturally Speaking Installation Experience I recently purchased a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) - Premium Edition. I have a top of the line ASUS sound card in my PC and it is configured to do some special things so I do not want to change any of its settings. I chose the USB version of the Koss Headphone set that Amazon offers in connection with DNS in hope that I would be able to avoid doing any fooling around with my ASUS sound card settings. I am very pleased to report that it did work as hoped and I suspect that I'm not the only one who might have similar concerns. I'm writing this to walk you through what I did and what happened as I went through the DNS installation process with regard to the headphone installation. I open the DNS product box and read the quick start guide it contained (I ordered the PC disk version of the product). The first thing it said I should do was to connect the microphone. They supplied one with two mini RCA connectors and provided a device to convert the two connectors toa single dual connector. I used neither as I wanted to go with the plug and play USB interface. While the USB headset is a plug and play device it was necessary for the system to do a software set up. I wasn't expecting that. Had I been I would have first done a System Image Backup so that I could revert my system to the way it was before starting the installation. As it turned out, It didn't matter, but it would have been the right thing for me to have done. You can do a System Image Backup by going to Control Panel -> System and Security -> File History -> System Image Backup. I'm working with Windows 8.1. The System Image Backup click-on option is in the bottom left corner of the File History screen. I did the System Image Backup as soon as the USB headset had been installed and before beginning installation of the DNS software. Once the system had installed and configured the plug-and-play USB microphone/headphone related software for my headset, I again went to the Control Panel and clicked on Hardware and Sound and then under "Sound" I clicked on Manage Audio Devices. That brings up a window with several tabs. Under the Playback tab, I found, as hoped, my ASUS audio device was still selected as the default. Using the slider on the left of the window I went down to the bottom of the playback devise list and found my newly installed "USB PnP Sound Device." Underneath it was the word "enabled." (I'm now doing this from memory as I did not record the process.) I double clicked on the PnP list entry and another window appeared. There was a "Configure" option/button and I clicked on that. The system took some time and configured the device. There was also a "Test" option button and I clicked on that and then I heard test sounds in my headphones. I believe at this time "enabled" changed to "Ready." It was later when I went back to the Playback tab that I notice that it now read "Ready." I think it is important that it read "Ready" so that DNS (and potentially other software) can find and use it. Next I went to the Recording tab and found, in my case that the PnP headset was already set to be the Default Device. I did not try to make the PnP device the default. I left the ASUS audio device as the system default. I was hoping that the DNS software would give me a choice of which device(s) I wanted to use for playback and record - and it did and I chose the USB headset PnP device and it worked just fine with DNS even though it was not the device configured as the default device. Application software, if so programmed, can do that. If your USB PnP microphone does not show up as the system default then you can try a process similar to what I did for the USB playback (earphones) and hopefully that will work for you. Now a short set of comments about the installation of the DNS software. Be patient it does take a long time for it to install from the CD. Initially I thought something might have gone wrong and the reading of the disk hard gotten into some kind of a loop, but not so. After a good while (5 minutes? - I didn't time it - but it seemed even longer than that ) the progress bar showed some progress. Then it sat there a good while and again showed some progress, and on and on. Be really patient - I don't recall installing any application software from a CD that took nearly as long. I went away several times just to keep myself away from the keyboard and the computer and doing something stupid to interrupt the installation process. Eventually, it finished and all was well. During the installation process there was a choice I made that I would do differently had I the opportunity to do it over again. I was asked about my vocabulary was it "medium?" or "extensive?" (The ?-marks mean I'm not sure if that was the exact word) The recommended option was "medium." In my case, "extensive" would probably have been a better choice. At this time, I want DNS to do transcriptions of my voice recordings about things related to gardening. Plans, instructions, observations, photograph specific information. For that I did not think I needed an "extensive" vocabulary. But if I broaden my use of the device that may not remain true. I know there are ways to add words to DNS, but I don't know what was in the more extensive vocabulary that I failed to select and it is not apparent that I have a way of adding it in post installation. I could probably reinstall the software, but I'm not ready to take that option yet.

Some warnings and "heads-up"s about installation. 1) MY SYSTEM. I have been using Dragon NS on and off since 2000 (?) and installation is usually painful in some way. I have a decent but not a "power" system (Lenovo 201 with SSD in Win7; USB 2 ports; used DVD to install.) 2) INSTALL ON TOP OF? Since I have had Dragon NS problems in the past, I uninstalled V12 using Revo Uninstall, which mostly does the program's own uninstall but then adds a hunt for leftover registry keys etc. I did not install V13 "on top of" V12 but I did leave the user files during the uninstall of V12. My V12 didn't seem to offer any new version "update available" discount option, and I didn't bother to investigate. (Maybe there was an upgrade discount but they don't really want you to find it! Ha.) 3) SETUP.EXE. After clicking Setup.exe, you see a popup box, "Dragon will install...may take several minutes." NOTHING happened for about 7 minutes, so I worried it was hung up and killed it and rebooted PC and started over. This time, at about 8 minutes, the progress bar shot from 0% to 10% and then stayed there til 24 minutes, when progressed to 25%. Sometime around 35 minutes it moved again to 50%. The install took 1 hour from DVD on my laptop. I don't know if this was a software unpacking issue or a USB 2 speed issue. I think it would be substantially faster to install all of Win7 from a DVD. 4) ACTIVATE AGAIN. Then, when you launch the program, it immediately requires you to "Activate it" with the alphanumeric long key....yes....exactly the same one you entered during setup. I have never seen that particularly quirk before. 5) TAKING UP YOUR PRIOR VERSION "USER FILE." I installed V13 on top of V12 data, and it found my older user file. It said it would take 20 minutes to transfer the user file to V13. (Also, this took two mouse clicks: One for "Yes, upgrade" and then one for "Yes, Start." which I didn't notice at first.) For this profile update, the progress bar almost immediately went to 95% in a minute or two, but then sat there until the 20th minute and finished. 6) LOOK. The software appearance is newer and sleeker looking. I haven't used it yet extensively but it transcribed three paragraphs essentially perfectly. 7) SPEED. On a mid level PC it's not fast but it's not crazy slow either. If I had to guess I would say it seems slower than DS12 but more accurate when it finally displays. 8) SOUND/IMPROVE ACCURACY FUNCTION. There is an additional function it performs called "Improve Accuracy" which is under the Sound button. You make a relatively short reading (like 3 minutes) and it spends an hour of software analysis on it. In the old Dragon, as you read, you saw a color bar going across the words a phrase at a time. With this Improve Accuracy function, you just read, and apparently it understands what you are doing, but it's a little disconcerting after 15 years to not see the color bar progressing as you read. It gave a huge amount of text I could read, but when I clicked "stop" after several minutes of reading, it said it had enough and would start the 1 hour analysis of my voice. It wasn't clear whether to read the nearly unlimited text or when to stop. I picked a few minutes since that's what prior versions offered you to read. 9) STUFF IN BOX. I've been using a portable Koss 201 microphone for a couple updates now. Since I bought a boxed Dragon NS again this time, it came with yet another light 2-jack pc microphone labeled HS GEN C. 10) LICENSE. I've read online it lets you install 5 times with the software key, but verbally tells you to only use on one PC at a type. This would mean you can probably install on your desktop and your laptop; or on this year's PC and again on the replacement PC you buy next year. But fair warning: I don't have any personal experience trying this yet. Another thing I didn't face yet, it will also prompt you to "register" the software, i.e. give Dragon online your name and address and email rather than just the installation software key. I think I had one version of DS in the past that endlessly asked me to register name and address online over and over again for two years. 11) NICE FEATURE. V12 and V13 let you feed it specific written documents to add to its vocabulary, so I can feed it a 20 or 30 page memo I've recently typed. It then offers (but doesn't require) you to pronounce any of the new words to help train it. 12) ME. I use Dragon NS most often when I leave a business meeting with pages of scribbly hand notes I need to transcribe for my own reference. This is something I do regularly since it's often frowned upon to type during the meeting or to record it. It really shines for that since (A) the notes I'm making don't have to be perfect, and (B) I can just hold and look at my scribbly pages of writing and read aloud (and/or editorialize) without looking at a screen or needing a keyboard. I've never yet tried the PRO function where you can give it a preexisting MP3 file and it will do its best to transcribe it, although that sounds like a pretty promising feature if it works. For routine things like emails I happen to touch type plenty fast and for me it's never felt worth it to use Dragon as a frequent keyboard replacement.

Whatever you do, Do Not Buy this product! I'm going to do what others have done and write this review without AutoCorrect while using the software. I will correct any mistakes on my hand but not mistakes purely caused by the software. What a surprise, that there is a mistake in this very sentence I was writing. I clearly said "on my end" for the record I just typed that but going back to the dictation software. I could probably stop you right there "I just said stop the review" but I think as you will see this software is unbelievably poor. Maybe other reviewers have's stock in the company because this has been riddled with Harrison today but. (errors since the day I bought it). I wasn't originally planning to do a review like this but I think this is a great example of what a piece of junk the software is, so I'll keep doing that when you see me use parentheses, that is me typing what I was actually trying to say. Let me give you the most egregious error the software has made yet. Today I was typing an email to my boss and was midsentence and attempted to say the words "and since I" but what does Opera do (did the software do)? It thought I said "send email" that is a command. Can you guess what that command does? Will that was pretty embarrassing thank God it wasn't a client. If I were to keep using the software, which I certainly will not, I would have to names from an email that I'm applying to and then put them back in because this is way too high a risk to take with clients in the professional world. In case you're wondering I did the whole thing where you read to it lead learner language bought the Koss CS100 Speech Recognition Computer Headset. I did it all. I've been using it for a month, letting it supposedly adapt to my way of speaking, I don't mumble I don't have a speech impediment I speak like a normal person, the software just does not work it's quite clear. Please trust me when I say you will waste so much more time fixing errors and you will save by not typing. I would only recommend this software to people who hunt and peck as they call it, i.e. use two fingers to type. Anyone who can type properly will not save time with this junk software. Another issue is that when linking to Microsoft Outlook, Outlook will quickly realize the software is slowing it down and disable. (disable it). Perhaps that is a Microsoft issue but it will certainly affect you because it took me about 30 minutes to figure how to reenable it. I will close this review by showing you additional examples of mistakes the software made today. So these mistakes were made over the past two hours not over weeks of time just in the past two hours all these mistakes are made: Tried to say "exclamation point, which is a command. It wrote "Exhalation point" And I never saw her again became "nurse overage" (something I’ve never said in my life. I have never dictated the word “nurse” to dragon. John wants us to come to New Jersey next week became John once us to come to New Jersey next week (how often do people say that phrase? Wouldn't people be saying person "wants" us to come like 999 times out of 1000? When would you say person "once" us to come? This is an example of what garbage this software is. Absolutely was @za - again something I've never said or written in my life. Is @za more common than absolutely? Please trust me when I say I do not have morals (marbles - this is fkg amazing isn't it????) in my mouth I've even come to the point where I enunciate so clearly that I sound like a psychopath and before you make a comment, yes I tried speaking naturally in the beginning which is what they say to do. Them both was The boat Anyway I'm not mad at you and Anyway I'm not paying you There were two more that I can't figure out what I had originally said.