Customer Reviews

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred Mobile

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Product is Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred Mobile.
Purchased this product here and it arrived quickly. It came with the Philips Digital Voice Tracer 7655. Before I installed the Dragon software, I tried the Digital Voice Tracer (recorder) and it did not work. Checked the batteries and they were fine. Made sure they were in right, still a dead recorder. So now the fun begins (sorry this might be long). I contact Customer Support via email (I had to register on their web site to do this). They say that I must contact technical support "as they will try to determine if you have a defective/damage recorder. If it is indeed damage then they will be the one to replace it for free."

So I call technical support. They tell me that I must contact Philips to verify that it really doesn't work! Of course, I'm thinking that they're going to pass the buck. They will send me an email and I can reply to that after I talk to Philips. Unfortunately, there is no phone number to contact Philips in the package materials. I check their web site and after getting transferred 3 times to different Philips divisions, a voicemail says that I should contact the people that sold it to me for technical support!

So I email customer service and let them know that 1) I never received an email to reply to and 2) Philips said to contact them. I get a response: "We really do apologize for the miscommunication with technical support. However, technical support department is actually the correct department that will handle your issue, kindly contact them again at 1-407-241-1822, so that they can determine if the recorder is defective, if it is, then they will replace it."

Now this is turning into a major waste of my time. But I dutifully call technical support (again). I have to run through the whole thing again (they want to be very sure that they can't charge me for this call after all) and they tell me that I should send a copy of the receipt in response to an email and they would send me a replacement. So, I do that as well and get the following response: "Thank you for sending the requested file. We will be endorsing this to Customer Service and they will provide you an RMA number so you can return the recorder to us for repair/replacement. Thank you." and another email from Customer Service with a link to the RMA form.

So, here's where I am:
1. I haven't installed the software yet, so I don't know how it works.
2. I have to pay to send the recorder back to them even though they sent me a defective product.
3. I feel like I'm treated like a nuisance to them and they're making me jump through hoops. This is unacceptable customer support.

First off, this product installed on my Vaio desktop Vista Home machine without a glitch.

But after the installation, I realized that Dragon's software did not include the Philips "Voice Tracer" software. So it took me about 45 minutes to hunt down where I could download the Philips software (while I was on infinite hold, and infinite phone menu loops, for support from Philips -- none of which ever got me anywhere other than television remote control support).

Nuance/Philips, get your acts together. I don't care if you don't send me a CD for the Philips software. Just give me a SPECIFIC url to go get it. Print it on a little piece of paper in the delivered product! Why make your customers go hunt? Come on, you can do better than that. It's a no brainer. What you do now is nothing short of lazy -- at my -- your customer's -- expense.

Another gripe. Dragon requires the files it transcribes to be in .WAV format. But the Philips 'Voice Tracer' voice recorder -- which Philips calls a "digital note taker" if you're ever looking for support for it on their incomprehensible website -- records audio in its own file format: .ZVR

Okay, so the hard-to-find downloaded Philips software will convert .ZVR files to .WAV files so that Dragon can translate them...

...But only one at a time!

For the love of Pete, people! I thought you (Dragon and Philips) coordinated on this.

So I spend a full day recording my thoughts on the Philips voice recorder, creating, overall, 14 voice recorder files -- (a new one is created each time I click 'stop' on a previous one, and then decide to continue with a new one -- BTW, if I opt not to do that, the recorder stays on 'pause' mode, eating up battery life).

Now I have to manually convert 14 files, one by one, to .WAV format? If I try to select them all, the Philips software says, "Select ONE file."

This is beginning to get stupid.

Dragon, why don't YOU do the work for ME and just work with .ZVR files? Isn't your job to make this easy for me?

OK, I do the 14, separate, individual file conversions while I could be doing something else like fixing dinner, and the rest goes smoothly.

Well, almost. The Dragon software, after about a page an a half of transcribed text, tells me that I have exceeded the amount of text it can track re corrections. Sigh. It gives me no further clues. Good thing I've been twiddling with computers since 1984!

I dived into Dragon's configuation menus and tweaked the memory available for transcriptions by a factor of 10. I wonder how many new users could figure that out.

Again, Dragon... give more thought to user experience. How many people are going to pay in the hundreds of dollars for software that will only allow them to transcribe a page and a half of thoughts before giving them an uninformative error message?

Is there an executive awake there?

This stupid BS ruins customer ratings, including mine.

Once past all that, my impressions are generally positive.

The Philips voice recorder is small and adequate, with good audio quality. You get 6 hours of audio at the max quality -- which is what Dragon wants. The AAA batteries seem well coordinated with that.

Dragon does a pretty amazing job of transcribing voice. It even lets you select transcribed text, play it back, and correct it if it's wrong. It learns. Excellent.

In fact, amazing. I wrote four pages of text today while I was driving around doing erands. It only took me about an hour to edit and clean up -- much less time than it would have taken me to write it at my desktop. Plus, the added productivity time while I was out-and-about doing what would otherwise be unproductive, was a clear win.

For my purposes, this software/hardware combo is a winner.

It will be even better when Dragon/Philips get the customer experience together more re getting started.

I don't plan to return this product. At the end of the day, I think it's amazing.

This is a product at the beginning of its practical usefulness, like the spelling checkers of the 1980's. Before long, it will be a commodity.

For example, today I spoke into the microphone: "The Tao Te Ching, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna."

Dragon transcription: "There she be punished by the school and she crashed."

Now we're getting somewhere. ?

In a few years, this technology will rock and we'll all take it for granted. Right now, it's getting useful... in a 'getting there' sort of way.

Worth the price at the end of the day, but not without unnecessary effort.

The program does everything I need it to do. It actually works better than I thought it would. Slows my computer a bit, but the time I save dictating makes it worth it. I know the instructions say to talk normal volume and speed, but I get 99% correct dictation when I slow it down just a bit. Great program. Would highly recommend it to anyone needing this program's ability.

I have to say that, of all the computer applications I've used over the years, this is the most amazing. It installed without problems in a Vista environment and after "training" the software by speaking, I was off and running. It's hard to believe that, even when I speak fast, it keeps up. Of course, it not 100% accurate in recognizing words but does a much better job than I ever expected.

I did order v10 with the remote and was fully expecting problems with install. However, the installation was rather straight forward. I had enough time to install, do a quick dication test. Also tried the remote and was a little disappointed with the translation, but that might be me just doing a quick test and not thinking thru how best to use the remote. But I will try it alot more to fully understand how to best use the digital recorder and translation capabilities.
As for the horror stories I heard about V10 and Vista were no evident. Installation took maybe 15 minutes. I think registration on the Nuance site took longer. I was a v6 user a few years ago.

This is my first purchase of Dragon Naturally Speaking, and I must say I'm very impressed so far. Flawless install onto a Vista SP1 system. Flawless integration with my Plantronics 995H headset (wireless USB).
I purchased the Mobile version and received the Philips 660 VoiceTracer. Nice little gizmo -- works just fine for what it is supposed to do. If you want an awesome digital recorder check out the H2 Zoom, but the Philips is great for carrying in the car and shopping etc.

So now comes the annoying part. I want to transcribe the mp3's on the Philips, but in order to transcribe them, it wants the mp3's in wav format -- and tells you to refer to the instructions on your digital recorder.

Sigh. There apparently is software that is available to do this, but it is not bundled, nor are there any instructions included. Customer Support tickets on the subject have yielded no answers.

I did find one version of the "voice tracker" software, but it converted the zvr files and not the mp3 files to wav.

In conclusion, the Dragon Naturally Speaking is amazing and the jury is still out on the interface and usefulness of the recorder.

I ordered this for my work documentation. It saved me a ton of time once I got the hang of it. I had a problem at the beginning it was typing into a text box instead of my Word document. I went to online support and within a few hours they had a response to my issue. Their response was helpful and easy to follow. I am very please and happy with my purchase.

75% of my new memoir was done with Dragon. This is a great tool for me because I am one of those people out there who never learned to type. Easy to use, fun actually.

Cancer - It's a Good Thing I Got It !: The Life Story of a Very Lucky Man

I set up technology for clients with disabilities. I have used older versions of Dragon with some difficulty getting the user profile set up well enough for the dictation to come through without garbling. This version works much better, but you still need about an hour to get your user profile set up. This time I bought the mobile edition which allows you to dictate onto a digital voice recorder and then transfer the sound file to the computer to transcribe. It works perfectly, but takes more time than just dictating directly into the software. This is still a benchmark program that keeps getting better with each version.

Best text-to-speech ever!

It is a great product.

Buy it, so they can continue to improve! I never want to type anything in the future!

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