DNS 11.5 Home was a lightning deal yesterday (10/2/11) so I snagged it, thinking it was a great deal. I now regret, so very much, having purchased this product. The installation, on my Dell Inspiron N4110 was a terrible hassle. I got the same error over and over again regarding the state of my visual c++ runtime environment - it needed to be upgraded to the DNS version, but the DNS version didn't want to, but would if I wanted to risk a busted install. I spent at least two hours looking around the web for solutions to this and trying the various things that various websites, including the Nuance website, suggested. Finally, I simply proceeded with the installation and risked the busted install. I guess that's what I got. The install finished, I read a few training texts to get the software used to my voice and speech patterns, etc. Now, whenever I try to run another training text, I get an error when DNS tries to update my profile. There seems not to be, as far as the 30 minutes I spent searching the Nuance website leads me to believe, even a little bit of information about the error I'm getting. In the most recent forum I read, someone suggested that getting the Home or Standard version was a huge mistake. I concur. Dragon Home 11 + USB Sound Adapter
I just want to say that Dragon has come a long way. I think I owned the version 5 of dragon a long time ago and it worked okay for the day and age that it was made. You have to go back and fix some words every now and then but it was a lot easier than trying to type it all out by hand, since I'm not a typist. This new version of Dragon is just outrageous in the way it works, even if you don't know how to spell the word as long as you can say it Dragon will spell it for you, no need to drag out the dictionary. This version will precisely even spell out people's names as long as you can pronounce them right. I haven't owned this version for very long and am probably only using one sixth of what it is capable of doing. I am using it right now to write this review and if I had to type it using my finger pecking capabilities it would have took me forever to type this. I cannot say enough about this version of Dragon I am in no way sorry that I bought it and would recommend it to anyone looking for a great typing program. I was skeptical at first but after using it I don't know what I would do without it. So just buy it you won't be sorry, not one misspelled word in this review. And I would have had to get out the dictionary to figure out how to spell at least a few of the words in this review. But it wasn't necessary. All I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart Dragon for making such a reliable program.
This is my third version of Dragon, and, frankly, it's the same thing all over again. As usual, it's only really functional if you don't allow it to do commands (i.e. keep it in "dictation mode"). Otherwise you'll be opening programs and changing fonts and Lord knows what else without meaning to. It still *loves* to mishear words when they sound a little like commands. The accuracy for pure dictation continues to be pretty good, unless you use the scandalously bad headset and "USB Sound Adapter" provided; they are a joke. They reduce accuracy and have continually caused my computer to be unable to produce sounds even after turning off Dragon and pulling the headset. My $10 GE 98950 microphone is vastly more accurate and less buggy. Of course, it (Dragon) still gets fried after an hour or two of dictation. Meanwhile, the one "advance" is that they seem to have finally noticed that their "help" is garbage, so they've added a help sidebar that rearranges your desktop icons every time you open the program. Actually, the "Dragon bar" does that too. It's not that they're doing a good job of providing help: they never have and undoubtedly never will. But they're making a big show of it, and I guess that's the best we can hope for. Training to your voice is still pointless, and all the other "tools" to improve accuracy continue to not do a damn thing. Well, this is what being a monopoly does for you. They obviously stopped caring many years ago, but if you are a poor typist and have Windows 7, what choice do you have? No, Windows Speech Recognition is not a choice. At least Dragon is still basically pretty accurate and it doesn't work any worse than before.UPDATE: Apparently Windows Speech Recognition has gotten much, much better in the last 2 years. It is better than Dragon in stability, ease of use, training, design of the interface, and only using about 1/6 of the memory that Dragon requires. The accuracy seems slightly better than Dragon as well. The only drawback is that it is barely functional within Chrome and Firefox, but if you need to type a lot in your browser you can do it in WordPad and cut and paste. And, of course, it's *free* with Windows. I doubt that I will ever use Dragon again.
I just installed this program about an hour ago. I am talking to it to write this review. I went through the voice recognition which was part of the setup and then I said to it " bring up Microsoft Word" and it did! I dictated a letter for practice, I had to make a few corrections but I feel this is a normal part of getting acquainted with each other. I know I have a lot to learn about this program but so far I'm very impressed and how easy it is. I'm giving it five stars for now, if in the future as I use this program if I have any complications or other impressions, I will come back to this review and let anybody know who is interested how things are going, but for now I am very happy with this program.
We love this product. We are creating one profile for each member in our family! My 9 yr old daughter is planning to use it for some school assigments. It is very easy to use and it's amazing how the software gets smarter every time you use it. It came with usb sound adapter and headset.'
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