Nuance Dragon Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13 (Old Version)

I have Amazon prime. Took two days to get here. I bought the Dragon naturally speaking home edition. Im using it now to write this review. It comes with its own microphone so no additional KOSS CS 100 microphone is needed to be bought. This one works just fine. I got KOSS CS 100. Its useless to me right now because I have a laptop with only a connection for ear plugs. My laptop does not have the insert for a Mic. It has a built-in mic. The mic that comes with the Dragon home edition is just fine. It took 45 minutes to the city to install it. You have to turn off the firewall. Once it is installed, you can turn the firewall back on. I like the program. So far so good. Ive given four star. This is not a perfect programT There are some mistakes. But, since I have only used it for an hour I hope that with time it becomes better. I have already gone to the Dragon site and registered that does not take. Hopefully, this has helped you all to decide whether to buy it or not. I say go for it. What you have to lose $34? Its a fun toy.

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 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 certainly would not recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. First of all it was hard to get installed. I even called technical support for help and they had me download the program to install and it still wouldnt work. After many hours of trying to install it, it finally installed. However, it kept hanging up. It wouldnt even run long enough to go through any training for it. The training feature of this program gave the warning that the training program was not compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The program also gave warnings about a third party program interfering with it and I could never find any other program running. After searching on line for a solution I finally tried using the voice recognition feature in Windows. Windows voice recognition works wonderfully. It does everything that Dragon NaturallySpeaking says it would do and and takes dictation very fast. Naturally you have to give it some training as you would with any voice recognition program. I am writing this review with Windows voice recognition. It keeps up with me wonderfully gives me tremendous control of my computer through voice commands. No, I do not recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. I just wasted a lot of money which I cannot afford to do. I see no reason not to use the Windows voice recognition program when it works so well.

This is my first experience with speech to text, other than with a smart phone. At first I was very annoyed that the program was not load and play with Windows 10. I had Office 2000 installed (which worked fine) and DNS refused to load with outdated Word. I uninstalled O-2000 because Ill be using Open Office anyway. THEN, DNS says, well...not yet. You need to download an additional Microsoft file. Went to the MS page for that and saw that that file was old and obsolete...but downloaded it anyway. Reboot. Whataya know...DNS seemed satisfied and finally loaded. I believe DNS 13 is an out of date program, but the price is right. Seems to work with pretty much all programs on my machine and is quite accurate. Not perfect of course, but neither is my typing, by a long shot. I can see that it will take a few hours of using DNS to become really familiar with the commands but the time will be well spent.

This program is not as easy as one would think. First thing you should do is buy a better set of headphones with the program. The pair that are included did pick up my voice well and caused me hours of frustration. It also does not work well if you are reading things like recipes. It clearly states that you should speak in a normal voice and at a normal pace, but reading a recipe doesnt always work that way. After about two hours of continually having to correct the word eggs I gave up. By the time I went back and corrected all the mistakes in the text it would have been faster to just type it myself. I would guess if I wanted to dictate letters or work on a term paper this would work fine, but its not what I purchased it for. What a pity.

Unlike others I dont type 100 wpm so VR has been the holy grail for me. After reading a glowing review I was so excited abt getting Dragon 13. What I didnt realize is that you cant use it with any other software programs other than Windows related ones or easily with web browsers. (Just found out thiisnt even true!) I primarily bought it to use with Nolo willmaker which Ive been putting off...but now cant use. I called tech support and even he felt bad for me, lol. He told me to return it but it isnt possible. And PLEEEEASE its a nightmare to use unless you enjoy having a manual next to you while your trying to use it. I have ADD so concentrating is a bit difficult and I thought it would be so much easier to speak my thoughts but with each sentence I have to figure out how to issue about 10 commands. Its also soooo slowwww. I type faster when I hunt and peck. OK, after reading other reviews by longtime competent users who are still frustrated I dont feel as bad but Im stll so dissappointed that my slow typing is actually easier. It seems the Voice Recognition Id hoped for is still out of my reach. Ps I JUST FOUND OUT THAT DRAGON 13 WILL NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS 7!!! So now I can only dictate text into their text box...this was a total waste. I guess theyre working with Microsoft to force you to upgrade!!

It works. Sometimes, it takes a while for it to start especially if it has been idle.

Ive been a Dragon user for years, so - when the new release came out - I purchased it and upgraded. It has been a disappointment -- the new Dragon bar at the top of the screen expands whenever I scroll near it, and I find the software is a lot less responsive online (I grade papers in Google Classroom, and the new version has a very difficult time recognizing online documents as text fields). After a few frustrating hours of trying to make it work, I uninstalled and tried to roll back to version 12. Unfortunately, I needed to then do a clean install and cant find the disk. I went to Nuance, figuring since I registered the product I should be able to download a clean copy and reinstall but they have no download area, and wanted me to send them ten bucks for a replacement disk. So, looks like Im moving over to Google voice to text... a real shame, after some six years of using Dragon.

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).