Customer Reviews

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred Student Edition [Old Version]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This appears to be a good product, but the installation process is positively EVIL.

First of all, despite the way it is shown on the Amazon page, you do NOT need to purchase a headset; it comes with one in the box. The suggested Plantronics unit may or may not be better, but you do not NEED it.

Installation is a many, many step process. Enclosed in the box is a slip of paper with a relatively short "product ID" that is required for the first step of many.

The first step is "Eligibility Verification", and the instructions say this can be done online. Perhaps **someone** could do this online; I certainly could not, despite many attempts. Perhaps this would have worked better if the my son's school email address ended in .edu, or if their list of schools included high schools. Perhaps. I do not know.

Further confusing the issue is that the box says Nuance, and so does the website - but the emails come back from ScanSoft or custserv-uk@myidentit-e.com

I would **HIGHLY** recommend skipping the online method entirely, and going straight to the phone. The Tech Support phone number is not included in the box anywhere that I noticed, so I will leak the secret:
call 800-654-1187 during Eastern Time Zone business hours.

Once you have them on the phone, they can generate and give you the much longer (17 characters) Serial number. You will need that just to install the software.

You might want to keep them on the phone while you run the installation from the disk; you will need to talk to them AGAIN.

Once the software is installed and started, it generates a 16 character "Machine Fingerprint" which is tied not merely to your current computer, but the current configuration of the computer. You will need to give this code to Tech Support for the NEXT step.

They should now be able to give you the (are you ready for this?) SIXTY character activation key. I made no attempt to do this online; based on my efforts trying to get a serial number, it hardly seemed worthwhile.

Once THAT has been entered properly, the program will run. It will then walk you through a series of tutorials and training exercises, all of which I skipped because I want the software setup for my son, not for me.

Despite the lack of training, after a minute or two of talking, it worked surprisingly well.

I need to test this with my son for a while to see how useful it will be. For now, I would give it an F- for pain of installation and time required. If I had simply had this sent to him at school, I do not think there is any way he would have successfully installed it.

Using the above notes, it should be possible to complete the installation process about an hour.

Keep in mind that the installation is apparently tied to the exact configuration of your computer. If you do something that Nuance interprets as "evil", like add memory or delete the recovery partition (thus changing the apparent size of your hard disk) you will have to go through the activation process AGAIN. If you purchase a new computer, you have to go through the entire process again - if they let you.

I would rank Nuance on a par with PTC (Paranoid Technology Company), the publishers of MathCAD for unspeakably evil installation procedures. They expect us to trust them that the product is useful (despite the usual shrinkwrap license that says it is probably NOT), but they clearly do not trust us at ALL.

I found Dragon Naturally Speaking easy to install, easy to use, and extremely accurate. I am using the product to write this review, and find it to be much faster than the previous version. It could be that there were problems initially, but if so, they appear to have been corrected.

I am a WordPerfect user and was very pleased to find that the program works exceptionally well with WordPerfect. It seems to work with all my programs quite well.

A couple of tips to get the most out of Dragon NaturallySpeaking:
Number One: be sure to go through the training, and choose the longer, more difficult mode. It takes longer, but results in greater accuracy, and is worth it.
Number Two: use the help feature often as you begin. Just say, "Help Me" to learn more about the program.

I highly recommend this program -- the only mistakes made here were my own.

This program has turned my life around. I injured my hands and arms so this program is a necessity for me. I can use it to e-mail, chat, dictate my college term papers, and even fill in this review. The headset is a bit uncomfortable, so I use a different headset. Be sure to use the tutorial. The more you use this program, the more accurate it becomes. It can even work with different accents and dialects of the English language.

I purchased the student version of this product as I am attending night school. You cannot get the product ID without submitting proof of your student status, so you can't activate the program. I sent everything I could get to the vendor and/or their representative and all I got back were form emails saying they didn't like the documentation the university was providing me. However, they would not connect me with a live person to get a fix on what could be done to gain their approval. After a week of trying to speak or communicate with a real person, I gave up and contacted Amazon, who approve my returning the product. I have nothing good to say about the software company, as this was a very negative experience to say the least. On the other hand it reinforces the safety of buying through Amazon. If you are going to night school, you should probable not bother trying to purchase this product as a student. Personally, after what they put me through, I decided that I would continue life without Dragon Naturally Speaking!!

My son has ADD and is in 7th grade and he is using this product to perform most of his written homework as it is faster than him writing or typing. We loaded it on a laptop and now he can work in the car, or move to another room in the house that has less distractions.

He was able to learn the software really quickly and was immediately more productive. He is very strong verbally and this product allows him to work to his strength and he enjoys using NaturallySpeaking.

The product has adapted to his speech patterns and the number of misinterpretations has dropped to a very low level after a few weeks of use. Great product.

I receive Dragon yesterday and installed it immediately. This is a student edition, and I had no issues receiving my student authentication. I did use an academic e-mail address. I had my product serial number within a minute. Installation was straightforward, and setting up the program was well documented. The program seems to learn as advertised and I've had no problems adding new terms to my vocabulary. Use a rather large academic vocabulary with many technical terms, so this was an issue with me, but no problems have materialized.
This review is being written using Dragon. The biggest problem is being able to think as fast as you talk, so that you don't need to do a large amount of editing.
Because I have nerve damage in both hands and arms, this product has been a great find. I'm now using the keyboard much less am, I find that I can enter considerably more content in a much shorter period of time. Because I need to write between 50 and 100 pages per week, I really appreciate having a product like this. It's so wonderful not be bouncing between the keyboard and the mouse for hours on end!

Trying to get this product activated for use, is pointless. I called customer service and was told to take a picture of the DVD, I take the picture, but there system will not accept anything larger than 1meg, there system seems like it is something out of the 80's. Trying to talk to a supervisor is just a waste of time. You should not need to spend 2 hours trying to use a product.

I read about Nuance's poor customer service before, but being the eternal optimist I decided to ignore.

Well, we bought the product; it installed nice enough and works well. However when I called in to inquire about other language extensions/dictionaries, it turned into a nightmare.

Nuance US does not stand behind their product. They tried to refer me to the UK to buy a non-English version for 149 British pound + international shipping. They also told me, "it is all on the website" which it was not.

Never again with Nuance. A painful lesson learned.

This is a fantastic program, so good in fact I invested in the company because I think it is THE way of the future. I'm a writer but a bad typist. I have some problems with typing that make it painful. This program allowed me to write my last full length play.

I work in the IT department of a small university. I had tried the Standard version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking over the Christmas holidays and was impressed by how accurate the program was when I was dictating into MS Word. But, I also wanted to be able to dictate into a portable device and then have DNS transcribe from the uploaded mpeg or wave file.

I haven't had alot of time to work with this and it wasn't as accurate as when I was dictating from a microphone, but that is probably because you would have to train DNS to understand you via the specific recorder you are using. I don't know how you would do that for an imported audio, but via a mike, you can read selected text to train DNS.

Still, was very happy with the transcription accuracy and speed into Word. I'm a relatively fast typist, so depending upon the format and wording of the original document, it may be quicker to just type the document. e.g. If you have a bunch of parentheses, quotes, special characters, or words that sound similar to commands.

*Oh, neither Standard or Preferred versions do very well, or at all, with voice commands for MS Outlook.