Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 12.0, English (Old Version)

Increase your daily productivity with speech to text speed
I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) since it was first released to the public, and I could not imagine my life without this product. I have gone from wearing out headsets over the years with the leash tethered to my computer, to ordering a wireless USB ear and mic setup, and now I’ve gone back to the tethered headset again so I don’t have to worry about recharging my wireless adapter.I handle ALL my email correspondence with DNS, I write my books, reports, and even this review with it. The product has gotten more refined and the accuracy is about 99 percent. But, I can train the most common words and expressions that I use within 5 seconds. Plus, all the commands on my laptop that I would normally do by touch or with a mouse, can be accomplished with voice commands from the Dragon.I would say that I easily reduce my typing time by 75 percent, and the best part? I don’t have to think about what I’m going to say. I just say it and the words appear on my screen in the application I’m using. I even use DNS on my iPhone. It’s just a more efficient way to get things done.My typing speed is proven with testing at 120 words per minute, but I can never speak faster than what the Dragon can capture and dump the words on my screen.About nine years ago, I worked for a hospital and for an outsourcer who took digital files that doctors dictated and I would transcribe them. I’d play the file, stop the recording with a foot pedal, and then speak the words into Dragon. Yes, with their medical version, it took words that were 20 characters long and spit them out with ease.Then I moved into a new house and learned that my neighbor ran a transcription service for court reporters (before everything was computerized). She hired me to transcribe the court reporters’ tapes and was always amazed that I had 100 percent accuracy and my turnaround time was like none she had ever seen in her 20 years of business.My friends and clients think the technology is too difficult to learn and they’re apprehensive about trying speech to text. Yet, they’ll learn how to use a photo uploading program, and figure out how to live stream TV shows to their flat screen. Setting up the software for Dragon is way easier than any of that.If you’re looking for ways to spend more time with your family and get away from the computer or tablet, you should try Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance. But be careful, because it just might give you so much free time you’ll have to look for things to do to fill the void.

Love-hate
9/17/2013 – Problems mysteriously resolved. My guess is that when I installed Dragon their server that registered the software was down or something so every five activations software would hang (you know I’m if they would display a message instead of just hanging software they would be so much better) and I would have to unload and reload, Losing the training each time. Each time it would ask me to register again which I did in the last time my guess was the charm. Otherwise this is great software. I have changed my rating to four-star.9/10/2013 – still having the application hang which requires un-install/install, training, etc. Until I learn of a fix for this the product is of little value.9/9/2013 I’ll put my updates at the top of the review. If you read it all you can see I love the product – when it works. Yesterday instead of just exiting Dragon, I first closed my profile. This morning, for the first time, it booted up without hanging. Could it be this simple. I’ll update this review as I learn more. I’ll like to raise the star rating !! Later same day – I hope I’m not acting too soon, but I’ve reboot several times and Dragon has loaded without hanging. IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to close your user profile before closing Dragon or shutting down your computer.This old Southern boy is going to get a real education in how to speak correctly so that Dragon will understand.The real trick is to know what you’re going to say before you start saying it that way Dragon can help you out. By doing this I find that Dragon is about 100% correct. What a joy to use. My only complaint was in the setup because I could not seem to get my microphone to work correctly I still don’t know what I did to make it work. Suddenly it began to work once it did it works great. So I cannot tell you how to avoid this problem since I don’t know what happened myself. Nevertheless this comment, review, was spoke into existence via Dragon with no editing. I am quite pleased. Being a Southerner I need to improve my diction and I believe this will help.So if you have trouble setting this up hang in there it’s worth the effort. Wow!The only reason I did not assign five stars is because of the trouble I had during setup. That problem may be unique to me; so I will be busy with dictation and reading.Two more points. First the headphone and microphone which came with the software works better than anything else I have part of that may be because of the “pop” guard microphone.I’m using chrome as my web browser and when I use Dragon to dictate text into a text box it opens up this little dialogue box which allows me to edit whatever and then hit one button to transfer into the destination text box in the browser. That works very well. I’m using Windows 7 home edition premium only 64 bit machine. Notice the impact of my southern accent above I said on my and it typed “only” because we Southerners have very lazy tongues. Hopefully my tongue will be approved by speaking text instead of typing text. This may be the biggest benefit I get using Dragon naturally speaking home 12.0 software.What a wonderful product this could be. When it works it’s great, but after the first day it always things when loading and the only fix or workaround I found is to uninstall the software and reinstall this is about a 30 minute or longer ordeal I can find nothing at their website relating to this problem. I’m playing with some settings in hopes of finding my own workaround. I will report back here if I find any solutions. In the meantime I cannot recommend this product at all.I’ve changed my Star rating two stars to reflect my love-hate feelings about the software.

So far, I rate it as a 4 star, as NaturallySpeaking does what it claims to do, but we are not yet fluent users, and still have to make a lot of manual corrections.This software was purchased for the purposes of helping my two sons (who each have learning disabilities and ADHD) with homework assignments (and becasue it is a tool currently used by our public school system).We are still in training mode with the program, and it is having some trouble with speech patterns and word recognition. We are also struggling with the correct commands it requires for executing tasks (like spelling corrections, text selections and deletions). So far, it has been interesting learning how to use it, and we are persevering through the bumps with speech recognition. It is my understanding that the more a user reads and dictates, the more accurate Dragon NaturallySpeaking is supposed to get.If this software can help my boys get their thoughts, opinions and answers on paper, and help them find more academic success, it will be well worth the time and effort put in to train it to interpret their speech patterns (Because I am growing TIRED of acting as their Scribe!).

I use speech recognition a lot as i have severe nerve damage in my hands. This version ( 12.5 updated ) Works great where I use it a lot…in Tinychat rooms. It types directly into the chat bar without problems. I did buy Dragon 13, and it would not work for me as I wanted, so I returned it without any problems to Nuance.