Customer Reviews

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6 Preferred

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is a breakthrough product. I had Dragon version 3 on a Pentium 2, and it was so frustrating that I gave up. I think that was most people's response to earlier versions of voice recognition software. Part of the problem was processor speed and memory. Now, with a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 and 256 MB it is at last a reasonable and workable software.

However the training described in the advertising is optimistic unto misleading. The user files continue to accumulate corrections and understandings of the user's speech. It is after several hours of dictating and making corrections that it becomes reliable. The longer one uses it the fewer edits one needs to make.

By pronouncing clearly and rapidly the user can get very high accuracy. It is counter-intuitive that it should be more accurate for more rapid, more continuous speech, but that is how it works.

The integration of the Preferred version with Word, Excel, Access, and Internet Explorer makes it useful and convenient, and keeps it from being a novelty. For instance, I am dictating this in IExplorer and it has required very few edits. I expect that dictated documents will always require some edits but it will save tremendous amounts of typing and time.

For people who do large amounts of typing this product is invaluable - a real breakthrough. The few hours spent training the software will be rewarded amply by months spent dictating instead of typing.

I strongly recommend using a USB microphone. With an analog microphone the user-trained files are dependent on the sound card. With USB they can be copied to other computers, such as laptops. (And you thought cellphone users were annoying - just wait until people are dictating to laptops on airplanes.)

If one uses Microsoft Outlook for correspondence, be sure to select Word as your editor because Dragon does not work with the default editor. (Tools-->Options-->Mail Format-->Use Word as Editor).

Downsides:
This is billed as protecting one's hands from wearing out from overuse. But bear in mind - voices wear out too.

If one sets Dragon to maximum accuracy it becomes somewhat frustratingly slow. This is not caused by insufficient memory as I thought (I added 512 MB - didn't help). It is a processor speed limitation. Which I take to mean that the glory days of voice recognition lie ahead of us. When Intel's and AMD's marketing wars will have brought us 10 , 20, or 100 GHz processors, we will be able to turn to our "Scotty" computer and say, as we always dreamed of saying, "Beam me up, Scotty" - and it will do it.

It sure would be nice if Dragon worked out of the box, let alone if Dragon delivered the functonalities promised. In my experience, it did neither. (I am running Dragon 6 Preferred on an XP Pro machine using Word 2002 and Outlook 2002.)

Within an hour of use, I began having a problem in which Dragon declined to capitalize the first word of a sentence and failed to put a space between words. Resort to ScanSoft's technical support site was dismaying. Contacting a technician by e-mail costs $10. Contacting one by phone is $20. I don't know about you, but I feel that after spending $160+ on a program, and running into a major bug after only an hour of use, I ought to get some free tech support.

Okay, so then I went to the technical notes section. Tried multiple searches. Nothing. Finally started scrolling through the list of recent tech notes. (A depressingly long list, I might add.) I found a recent tech note addressing the words run together problem, which included many of the search terms I had used in the search engine. Why the search engine did not pick this note up, I still don't know. In any event, the note required me to download Service Pack 1. Then it turned out that Service Pack 1 was only for Dragon Pro, not Dragon preferred. Hence, ScanSoft has NO fix for my problem.

Additional problems developed thereafter: The "Select and Say" and Correct functions stopped working in Word 2002. Dragon turns out to basically not be usable in Outlook 2002 unless you use Word as your editor, which then means you lose the correction function. This makes it almost impossible to correct mistakes, let alone train Dragon to improve its accuracy.

If you are planning on buying any of ScanSoft's Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, I would urge you to first visit their website...to read up on their pricing scheme for tech support.

I quote, "You may contact ScanSoft Technical Support by email through the support section of this web site. Fill out a Problem Report Form and a response will be sent in a timely manner upon receipt. Each incident entered from the Problem Report Form with be charged $[money]. Email is a lower cost option to telephone support."

[money]to get them to answer your tech support questions on their products?!?

But that's not the worst of it. Notice the last sentence of that quote. "Email is a lower cost option to telephone support."

Is it ever.

I quote further, "One free technical incident" support call per customer is allowed, each "Additional incidents $[money] each"; ...for each additional call!

Consider yourself lucky, version 5 users don't even get the first free call.

So what does this mean? It means that if you don't get all of your problems solved in one phone call, or, heaven forbid, you have a problem somewhere down the line, you get the privilege of paying ScanSoft ...for any tech support you might need getting their product to run (and that's per call).

I wish you luck if you go ahead and buy this product; but please, don't just take my word for what I'm writing...do yourself a favor and check out their website for yourself first.

Having used an earlier version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, this product is a great improvement both in accuracy and functions. You will probably need lots of memory (ie 192 MB or more) but I have got reasonable results with this software even on a 500 Celeron. Being able to save user files is useful, particularly if you have a USB microphone.

When I went to high school (circa late 60's) only girls took typing. When I got my first computer in 1987, I still didn't learn to type correctly choosing instead to do a two finger dance on the keyboard. Dragon NaturallySpeaking and I go back about 4 years to 3.X I think. I even transcribe with a digital recorder. My two finger pace of about 30 words a minute is about four times faster using Dragon products. There is a learning curve that I think people who already type 50+ WPM will have to have patience for to get to the 100+ WPM payoff. I've read some of the negative reviews and this program isn't like some game you plug in and take off with. It will take time for the program to learn your way of speaking and for you to learn how to speak consistently one day to the next. Plan on at least a week or two to not feel like you have wasted your money and a month or two to be downright impressed.

This program has always needed a very powerful computer. My Pentium III, 600 Mhz can't do it justice. I have to close all other apps. The digital recorder transcription process is an even bigger power eater.

I bought this product to help my visually impaired brother get better use from his computer.
One of the things I wanted it to do was read his email for him. Contrary to the implication of its advertising, it doesn't read the very commonly used AOL email.
It also does not allow selection of a default print size on its Dragon Pad to be increased.
Dragon is also very bad about providing on-line support unless paid for. I requested help on these two items agreeing to pay; response was that the software just doesn't do these things; and goodbye.
I don't know how good later versions of ViaVoice are, but an early version was certainly able to read AOL email.

I just got this product today. It only took a few hours for me to program my voice. I still have a little ways to go but, is a lot easier than typing. It is very well worth the cash. I would recommend this product to any college student, business associate, or anyone who uses a computer for type. I am using this product right now to fill this format. I bought this product because, I my not a good speller. This takes it all a way. Thank you

Admittedly, I only use the program to input voice into Word. I am an author, so I have to enter a great deal of text in a short period of time. Forget about cheap mikes. They simply don't work. You need to purchase a USB headset, mine is from Plantronics... So if you're going to input a LOT of text, and have the money and high end equipment needed to use the product efficiently, this is an incredible buy. Training, once I got a good mike, took less than an hour. I can see why users who do not use the product regularly might think it is a bad buy (and it probably is!). But if you believe there is a right tool for the right job, this is it.

this product has worked wonders for me. I can now create documents and e-mails much faster, actually about 4 times faster, than typing. The accuracy is excellent, and I was able to add new words like proper names quickly and easily. My sister recommended it to me because she has carpal tunnel, and this allows her to use her computer pain free. I've tried IBMs viavoice product and it wasn't as good. Dragon works with more apps and operating systems, and is really easy to use.

Don't buy this product. It did not meet my expectations. I purchased NaturallySpeaking 6.0 and I worked with it for about seven hours today in hopes of getting it working with some degree of accuracy. I spent over two hours "performing additional training" which consists of reading/recording on-screen passages to improve the accuracy of recognizing my voice. I ran the Acoustic Optimizer at least a dozen times after making corrections to dictated passages. Despite these steps, the program continued to make the same mistakes. It never seemed to be as dynamic at adapting to my corrections, as the product claims would indicate. The drop down Correction Menu would almost never have the correction choice that I was seeking despite making the same correction repeatedly and running the Acoustic Optimizer.

I don't think that the productivity gains I was hoping for from this product could ever be realized. I think that I would spend as much time making corrections to documents as it would take to type them the old fashioned way.