Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 Student Edition [Old Version]

I am a happy customer of Dragon 10. I bought the student edition of 11 for a student friend. I was shocked and embarassed by the process of trying to register the product. You know how much you hate those refund processes which seem like a scam designed to cause you to fail? Well, that is what this feels like. You need to provide a complete description of yourself, your school, scanned copies of your student ID, scanned copy of paperwork from the college showing your studentship to be current. And the icing on the cake? You are going to send all this stuff to a third party who appear to be outside the USA and tell you it may take up to 30 days. The instructions are tedious and strict, and the follow up emails if they do not like what you send are abrupt and unfriendly. Yeah, really nice. I like Dragon 10. I am totally shocked that Dragon have such a nasty process for the Student Edition. Especially as this was a gift for another person, it has been an embarrassing and unpleasant experience. And, the product still is not usable, you do not get a code to activate the product until this third party is finished grilling you. Nuance should be ashamed to go to a third party and allow their customers to be introduced to Nuance in such a way. A Student Edition only exists because Nuance wants to make a good relationship with a new customer. What were they thinking? Such a shame that their technical nous is not matched by a friendly approach to customers.

I really like this product. It works well. Sometimes it types things I am not sure where they are coming from but for the most part this types exactly what I say and does it quite fast as well. I do recommend this to others, but it does need to be trained to your way of speaking and your accent or dialect to know what word you want typed.

BUYER BEWARE- Sent in all the required information to register the product. The website says an email was sent with the serial number. No email was received. Called Customer No Service. They are of absolutely no help. They say they do not have access to the serial number. Told to use Live Chat. I tried. I wait in the queue a couple of times only to be cut off with a message someone would get back to me. Too bad I cant review the product, but it is not possible to activate it. VERY FRUSTRATING! Edit: After numerous tries to get on Live Chat, I was finally able to contact them. They emailed me the serial number. The original email had not been received. Now that I can actually try out the software I may revise my review.

I bought this only to transcribe taped interviews for a class project. I trained the program with my voice at least 3 times. The transcripts that resulted were just absolute nonsense, they were not even remotely similar to the actual conversations. I expected some confusion, maybe confusing There for Thier and stuff like that, but the sentences were just gobbletigook. If thats what youre planning on using this for, dont do it, its a waste of your money.

Hi, This is the first review Ive ever written but wanted to tell you what a great product this is. I purchased this product because I have health issues that make it difficult to type and almost didnt purchase this because of all the negative reviews. Many other reviewers noted that there was great difficulty geting the serial number needed to install the product. Well, I have a .edu email address. I received the program, went to the verification website, answered the questions, and was immediately verified. I waited about 30 minutes to check my email and there was the serial number. I installed the program, did the tutorial and training sections and was up and running. The first thing I did was to dictate class notes. The terminology was very technical and specific to this graduate class subject. Dragon got all the words, as long as I pronounced them right :), and I cant tell you what a relief it has been for me to be able to do course work without experiencing pain in my arms.

I have nerve damage to my right hand due to a work injury and at 53 I have had to rethink my life and go back to college so that I will be able to work again in the future. I purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 11 Student Edition the end of December. There was no problem at all getting the registration key, all you need is your college email address. The instructions tell you it will take 24 hours, but I received my key in less than 30 minutes. It takes a while to get your voice profile setup. For some reason the quick voice training didnt work and I had to read a passage from a list of books. That took about 30 minutes and then I was off and running. While the program doesnt get every word you say perfect every time, I would say its 98% correct most of the time. This version included a very nice headset with microphone and I have been able to write my first 3 essays in less time that it would have taken me any other way. I speak it types, I tell it to open Word, it opens Word. Its like Im dictating to a person and they are doing all the hard work for me. It is an amazing program and is worth every penny. I highly recommend this program for anyone with a disability and even for those without one.

I ordered this Student/Teacher version because Im a college instructor. Obtaining the serial number was not a problem. However, the DVD I received is warped, emits a loud clicking noise in my computers DVD drive (the same noise is audible on two other systems so the problem is clearly a defective disk), and it is unable to read the disk to install the program. Thats when I had the misfortune of contacting Benjamin in customer service. He is semi-literate in English and apparently located somewhere in India. He asked for all my order data from Amazon (order number, etc.). He even listened to the loud clicking of the disk in the drive, and agreed it sounded like there was clearly something wrong with the disk. Then some additional hoops to jump through: 1. E-mail him screenshots of the Windows Explorer interface to prove that my computer cant fully read all the files on the warped disk. 2. E-mail him digital photographs of the disk itself (top and edge) to prove that I have an authentic disk and prove that it is warped. Okay, this was a strange request, but using my digital camera not too much of a problem if it would have satisfied Nuance and gotten me on the road to receiving a new disk. Were these thoughts ever naive. 3. Ben replies. He now wants the POP proof of purchased of the Dragon 12 that came from Amazon. Huh? What exactly does POP proof of purchased mean, and why wasnt it requested during the original phone call? I send him a screen shot of my order record from my Amazon account and the scanned barcode label from the box. (Maybe the latter is what he meant by proof of purchased [sic]?) 4. Ben replies again. This time he wants the email from amazon indicated the the payment you made from them if there is please attached it with this email as you reply. LOL. This reads like work from one of my grade-F students. Again, if this is what was required, why wasnt it clearly requested in the original phone call? I forwarded him the original invoice e-mail. I made a little wager with myself that this would magically prove insufficient as well. Sure enough, it did. 5. Sorry its me again, as i can see in your screenshot [sic] of the email you got from amazon one last favor, can you please take a screenshot also of that the same email but open the VIEW INVOICE option. Take a screenshot of an e-mail he already has right in front of him and at the same time click some link. Boy, that sure makes sense. Sorry, but Im now done with this: from the bizarre request for photographs of the defective disk, to one illiterate and cryptic request after the other. Anyway, Ben made clear on the original call (after we had spent about 5 minutes entering my Amazon order information into his system) that the system screenshots showing the disk as unreadable along with the disk photos would be sufficient. Now theres another new and nebulous obstacle course to run every day. I am a very busy college instructor who doesnt have time for this. If I dont receive a response from this review within a week from a literate adult at Nuance, I will immediately initiate a chargeback on my credit card and look at other options, particularly Windows Speech Recognition. Not only is it free, but its been reported to be a decent program with even more improvements expected on the forthcoming Windows 8. Ive been a solid Dragon customer since version 9, but after this experience Im done with Nuance.

Unfortunately, all posted links to the education validation on the Nuance site are broken. What IS this mysterious process anyway? Are part-time graduate students eligible for the Premium 11 Student version? Thanks.

Working just great

I lost a whole weekend that I could have dedicated to setting up an accurate voice profile for the software and then using the software. The wrong serial number (for a different product altogether - Mac Dictate 2.0) was provided on Nuances automated website. I was literally stuck dead in the water with a worthless serial number. (I was getting the academic version) I tried to register my product on the website (the only way to contact Tech Support) but without a correct serial number, I was stopped in the middle of that process. All-and-all, this is frustrating process. Nuance needs to overhaul their web processes and make them usable for clients. No matter how good the Dragon product MAY be (I dont know since the company is incompetent in delivering a frustration-free install process), customers will not stick around. And trying to talk with customer service reps is like talking to robots who just repeat themselves- they are reading off a script that I could easily do on my own and find answers faster from just by searching key terms instead of waiting on their long automated responses. As the old cliche goes - not good for business. UPDATE (usability testing): This is a Dragon Naturally Speaking review actually done WITH Dragon NaturallySpeaking and done on a headset (with) a noise canceling microphone in the car on the way to work so (we) will see how well it can transcribe what I am actually saying ..... -ERRORS- (CORRECTIONS) 1- The main issue is -a not- (it does not have) very good -actor- (accuracy). -see a need to- (I know you have to) train Dragon. I (have) been very diligent about giving Dragon -aint- (a) digital voice profile -is- (because) you can have different voice profile(s) (based off) what youre using. And I got a digital voice recorder profile and the accuracy is still not where I -needed- (need it) even though Im pronouncing words like a broadcaster would pronounce (his) words. And Dragon actually expects you to be able to be a professional anchor and were not talking about hard words that Im trying to pronounce -a- (but) simple thing(s) and Dragon still gets it wrong because it simply cannot take any fluctuation in your voice. (If) you mumble or -bespeaking- (if you speak too) fast but -is- (it will get) something wrong. -cf. the list fits- (So you have to be almost pitch) perfect in everything -he said- (you say). So unless youre extremely motivated to use the software and (then) go back and try to -takes- (fix) the accuracy issues in your user profile, -within- (then) this speech to text software may not be what youre looking for. Yes I am motivated to use the software which is why Ive done a bit of usability tests and -down- (found that) the accuracy in transcription is horrible. For brainstorming purposes, Im trying to put down the best ideas I can while in the car. But literally when I brainstorm theres no accuracy in the transcription (and I) have to go back -active- (and I have to) repeat complete thoughts all over again or change (them) in the transcription after-the-fact and that leads to the second point ..... OK...Im motivated to use the software but not motivated to continue writing the corrections from this audio that Dragon couldnt do correctly in the first place. You get the point though. 2- Going back to make corrections - this is supposed increase your accuracy for your user profile which I would be fine in continuing to do but there is a big gap for the user to actually understand if the corrections are being applied to your user profile. What makes the corrections in Dragon? I open up the transcription in Dragonpad but then it doesnt tell me when Im typing the corrections from the transcription that the software is actually recording my corrections. Dragon does a very poor job of telling you the one-two-three-step process of how to improve your accuracy. Sure it does look at documents and e-mail to improved your accuracy (for writing style, jargon, etc.) but it doesnt tell you for the transcription process itself when your typing corrections from what the software just transcribed if it is recording those corrections into the profile. In short, when youre fixing all the transcription errors, theres no thank you or we got it prompt from Dragon that it is recording the actual words you wanted transcribed in the many spots it messed up. Its worth noting I actually have Dragon for Windows 11.5 Premium/Pro running on a virtual machine on Mac (its the same thing as having a full Windows 7 OS on the Mac). The Professional Edition, which you have to have if you want to take a digital voice recording and have it transcribed, is preferable to paying more than double for the Mac version, which is actually two software products that are needed to do the same thing. Dragon Dictate for Mac and Mac Speech both have to be purchased (again at more than twice the costs of Dragon Naturally Speaking) in order to do the same thing as the Dragon Naturally Speaking software. For Mac users, I highly recommend the Virtual Machine route (with 6 Gb of Memory) because you can use your one copy of Dragon Naturally speaking on five machines. Its not really a good business model to try and rip Mac users off like that. The limitations of the Dragon software allow me to only do outlines for different projects and notes to myself (that I could easily transcribe with my smart phone). Basically I cannot do any real original brainstorming or have a flow of original ideas or generate creative marketing ideas (they dont resemble anything that they should in the transcription). I just want to speak my free-flowing ideas when I get really inspired and really go for it. Thats just not possible. The company, Nuance, should really look into their user interface overall because that and their lack of customer service - which is a severely crippling issue b/c they are just so incredibly horrible - make this software just not worth the effort unless youre really motivated. And my motivation is becoming very selective with Dragon.