Top positive review
6 people found this helpful
Increase your daily productivity with speech to text speed
By Candace Sinclair on Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2012
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.
Top critical review
8 people found this helpful
Not compatible with OpenOffice AFTER 3.4.1 Lots to learn, punctuation use is odd at first. Much frustration with 12.5 update.
By Cat Doc on Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2013
I hesitated to choose between 3 and 4 stars. Let's just say I will continue to use it and possibly update it a year or more from now. I bought it to speed up writing a novel. When DNS works, it's great, but to get it to start working for me took an entire, frustrating DAY. Before considering this product, truly research if it is FULLY compatible with the software you use. My example: Yes, it technically can slightly interface with the latest OpenOffice, but it will NOT take dictation if you use any version of OpenOffice AFTER 3.4.1 I found out the hard way, with actual tears of frustration and gnashing of teeth, and hours on the forums of both Apache (OpenOffice) and Nuance (Dragon Naturally Speaking). My "fix" was to de-grade my OpenOffice with an install of version 3.4.1 As of this writing, it will not take dictation directly into Gmail, but opens a dictation box you have to transfer (or say "click transfer"). I have no experience using DNS with any Microsoft software. Updating to 12.5 was another frustration, as the software updated give you options that may utterly damage your install and force you to start over. Short version: Set a restore point in Windows! Only then save the update to your hard drive, and only then, have DNS completely exited/closed/off, and THEN try to update it. I have not had to use customer support yet, but the forums at Nuance are not promising. Then again, you're only going to read complaints. Your mileage may vary. I'm writing everything else in this review using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. In fact one of the strange nuances of using Dragon NaturallySpeaking just came up in that 1st sentence. It listens to everything you say, so when I said … "Next paragraph" just then, it started another paragraph. For me to dictate the 2 words "next paragraph" I have to say the word "next" then wait a 2nd and then say the word "paragraph". Also, notice the word 2nd was typed instead of what I meant which was second. It's usually very good at discerning homonyms. I wish getting quotation marks was easier. I have to say "open quote" and "closed quote". Just getting that sentence dictated took longer than it would've for me to just type the cursed thing. I have a very fast machine with 4 dual threaded processors of which Dragon NaturallySpeaking seems to use about 5 of the 8 threads when I am dictating. I can go for long, long stretches of speaking and it just listens and listens and is able to capture pretty much everything I say, much different than when I 1st tried Dragon naturally speaking years and years ago. Part of using Dragon naturally speaking is training it to your voice speech syntax etc. which takes a couple of hours and should be considered part of getting this product tuned to you. Once you get it "rolling" and you've trained it for some of the unusual words you use in your everyday communications or in your writing project, it really really can go much faster than you can type.
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