Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The original title of my review was going to be "snookered again," but I've since had a change of heart (and sound card). I originally purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4 years ago which was a total piece of junk. Upon hearing a short review on NPR, it sounded like things had improved.
First off, caveat emptor. You need a good sound card. Nuance is not very helpful here. Their website/docs simply state you need a Sound Blaster 16. I don't know if it's occurred to them you can't purchase a Sound Blaster 16 card anymore (nor would you want to), and they should just bite the bullet and present a list of cards that work well (like they do for microphones). I bought a Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeMusic which seems to work. Second, you need a hefty machine. For me this is a 2.4 GHz dual processor XP workstation with a gig of RAM. The box says you can get by with 512 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor, I'm not sure I believe this.
Once you have the right hardware in place the software seems to work fairly well. This review was dictated using the software. However, I'm not giving them five stars because they still seem to suffer from poor software engineering. As an example, take the set up and training process. I was waiting for a new sound card to arrive and thought I would try using my onboard sound card built into my Dell. The setup process did claim that the sound quality was insufficient. Unfortunately, navigating out of the process was impossible leaving me stuck at the "welcome to general training" screen. When the new sound card arrived, Dragon was still stuck looking at the on board sound system and had no UI to allow me to use the new sound card. My only solution was to disable the onboard sound system which luckily forced Dragon back into configuration mode where I could reselect my microphone parameters. A second example of amateur software development was an error message ("can't load compatibility module") that is caused by Dragon's attempt to build a link between icons on the desktop and voice commands. This message wouldn't be so bad if it were not accompanied by random crashes ("dragon is unable to respond, please close all applications using..."). A recently posted knowledge base article states that the error message only comes up if links are invalid on the desktop, and suggest removing things using RegEdit (I kid you not). After uninstalling a SonyEricsson desktop link that I wasn't using, the message went away along with the random crashes.
In summary, Dragon has matured from snake-oil ware (v4) to usable. However, they need to make an investiment in the non-voice rec modules of their software.
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Dragon products have won over 175 major awards for accuracy and ease of use, and are used by more people around the world than any other speech recognition software. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 9 gives small business users and PC enthusiasts the power to create documents, reports, e-mails and more - all by speaking! Fast, easy and amazingly accurate, it's over three times faster than typing. Just use your voice to dictate and edit in Microsoft Word and Excel, Corel WordPerfect, and virtually all Windows-based applications. You can even dictate into a handheld device when you're away from your PC, or use a Bluetooth microphone! It's never been easier to use with no script reading required, so you can get started right away! Dragon products have won over 175 major awards for accuracy and ease of use, and are used by more people around the world than any other speech recognition software. Use Dragon NaturallySpeaking with Nuance-approved Bluetooth headsets Dictate into any Nuance-certified handheld device for automatic transcription when you synch with your PC Supports Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird New indicator that lets you know when you have Select-And-Say functionality available New supported edit controls include Borland's TMemo, TEdit & TRichEdit controls as well as TE Edit from SubSystems and TX Text from TX Text Control Also supports handheld digital recorders and other PDAs that record in. wma and .mp3 format for deferred transcription.
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