Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 [Old Version]

The Dragon is actually for my husband. Hes still working on the voice recognition or communicatio aspect. Sometimes it understands what he says and sometimes not, which might be because he is just learning how it works. So, I think he needs a little more time to understand how it works before he can make a fair judgment of this product.

I got this program for my wife to help with the amount of writing that she does. My beef with this is the training that you have to do so that the program recognizes your voice. It turns out that my wife has never fully follwed through on using it. It does work, and it does help, but you have to work at it.

After researching which version of Dragon for my teenage son to use, we chose Version 11 (Old Version) and are very happy with it. It isnt perfect all the time, but its paired up well with the Plantronics 628 Stereo USB headset with noise-canceling microphone and works fine for his school work. It develops more accuracy with use, so as it learns to follow the users voice, it continues to improve. I wish that we had purchased Dragon sooner.

Several things to bear in mind with this product: 1) TRAIN it! Take the time to train the software to recognize YOUR voice and it works very well. 2) THROW AWAY the headphone and mic set that comes with the set. It is frustrating. I found out by using the rig with another software that the mic seems to get tired after a few minutes of recording and your voice seemingly begins to fade off. It happens 100% of the time. IF you need to use this one, experiment with different mic positions and take the sponge off of the tip to make sure the pick-up is facing the right way. 3) Highly recommend a USB headset like the Logitech USB Headset H530. In fact, I would have paid more for the software bundle to get a better headset. Nuance is not making the experience a great one, but its not a bad one either.

I can really see the benefit of this product. The only reason I gave it four stars is that I cant seem to get to the point of regular use. Im sure its easy once you grow accoustomed to it, but I seem to be having problems with the learning curve. Perhaps Ill purchase a training video and that will do the trick.

I have had this product for some time and it still does not learn my accent. I didnt even know I had an accent, but I must because the software just does not get me, no matter how hard I try. I am a writer and it is difficult at best to be creative with all the corrections needed when using this product. When I am writing things such as a fact-based only article, it is ok as I am not writing on the fly and can deal with all the corrections. It may be a good fit for someone else, but not me.

Version 11 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is working well for me. There are some new window control techniques which are nice and the premium version has more options for macros, etc. They appear to have changed the phonetic spelling somewhat so that it doesnt work quite as well. I.e., spelling the word very using the phonetic alphabet, I get something like Victor ERY more often, though its a subtle change. Overall Im pretty pleased.

Itll take some getting used to using it, with the various command, although the initial training I had to do was not as cumbersome as I had expected to have gone through and it was capturing what I was saying without error. Tried in another environment and it was not as functional, although, it will come in handy for recording meeting notes.

this is harder to use than they lead you to believe on the TV ads. I find it doesnt work great for most of the programs I use. it seems okay for just dictating.I find it a little slow, and end up using the mouse for most commands. I think as I learn the voice commands it will get faster for me, but not for the program.

I did not expect the product to work as easily as shown on TV, but have discovered that learning and remembering all the proper commands is more challenging than I expected. The speech recognition works, but sometimes it confuses words and at times confuses commands for dictation. I am certain I will master it, just not as quickly as I hoped.