Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Standard

List Price: $99.95

Customer Reviews:

A Boon for Carpal Tunnel Sufferers [Posted on 2004-03-18]
I'm a direct response copywriter, which means that I often have to key in great quantities of text. Unfortunately, I am also a sufferer of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Although I've only had this program for a few days, I find it has taken a lot of the stress out of inputting copy.

As another user suggested, it seems best to dictate the words, and use your mouse or keyboard for formatting.

The program works very well with e-mail and word processing. But as an added bonus, it seems to give you control over most functions of any Windows program!

For example, when your desktop is on the screen, you say "open Microsoft Word," and the program opens. Whoah, beam me up, Scotty! I would imagine that this program could be very useful to people with injuries or disabilities, not to mention "lending a hand" when your hands are full.

The program does make some recognition errors, but then I do suffer a bit from marble-mouth myself. Fortunately, it's easy to correct mistakes by selecting the words in error, and then saying the correct word or selecting one of the choices the program presents you.

Surprisingly, the program invites you to speak at your normal speed. Not to slow down as some earlier dictation programs forced you to do. There are also some passages they give you to read into the supplied headset microphone to improve the accuracy of the recognition.

They say it takes about two weeks to optimize the program for your speaking pattern. I find the other challenge is simply getting used to dictation; as a touch typist and self-employed individual, I'm not accustomed to dictating documents to a secretary!

The only reason I'm not giving this program five stars is because of the developer's stingy user support, as reported by other users here. When are manufacturers going to learn that it is imperative to provide a toll-free number for customers to call with product problems, and that customers should NOT be charged for the privilege either?

Still, until another developer creates a product as good as this, NaturallySpeaking is probably the only game in town.

I'm pleased... [Posted on 2004-06-01]
I have been using this software about a month. The improvement in accuracy has been nothing short of amazing. Yes, like other reviewers who have had good results, I spent the time and patience it took to train the system. I'm just a little annoyed that ScanSoft has recently dropped the price of its Preferred version, and not offered those of use with the Standard version an opportunity to upgrade at a reasonable price. But, as I build the recognition vocabulary, and since I don't work with Microsoft Office apps (I use Text Pad to review the spelling and spacing of the dictated materials), I'm not sure that the higher-priced version would have been that much more useful, given my work habits.

Disappointing [Posted on 2004-06-08]
It often writes absolute nonsense -- a decent grammar check of the kind that Microsoft Word has had for years would eliminate about half of that, and it pathetic that Dragon has not included this already. (Example: with a grammar check, it would have detected that "it pathetic" is not something I likely to say, and would have tried a different option like "it's". See? there it is again, "I likely".)

And if I say "select that" to bring up the correction menu (which often doesn't work, but anyway...) and wanted to choose item number four, I say "choose four"... but instead of putting in the fourth option, it types "choose for" or "choose four" or "shoes for".

These are minor example. Examples. Often the mistakes a much more dramatic. Are much more dramatic.

Love got a lot of effort... try again: although I go to a lot of effort to try and train the program, the accuracy is still very disappointed. (Disappointing!) It's generally much slower than typing because I spent so much time going back to correct mistakes.

And the Dragon Pad editor is not very good - can't do multiple undos (ie go back before the last edit).

Conclusion: Not good enough! Get it together, Dragon!

I'll give it two stars though because it believed it has ["at least it has"...i gave up and typed this] a module for non-US accent. Accent. Accent. Accent. Accent. Accent. Then. Damn. Accents.

I still use the program about half the time that I work catered computer... workout for...workout for... work at the computer, because it does relieve the strain on my hands and wrists. But not all the time because data does give me voice strain. I'm sure the voice strain would be much less if I could just dictate without constantly having to go back and give edit commands (or give the same command 6 times before giving up).

By the way some tips to prevent voice strain are found at: (...)

getting much better, but still plenty of glitches [Posted on 2004-07-08]
I've already reviewed this product, about a month ago, but since then the accuracy has improved dramatically, as it has learnt to recognise my speech. I often speak sentence after sentence with hardly a correction. Most of my gripes still apply though. And it seems to have good and bad days -- probably affected by microphone position among other things.

I use it less select half the time, to avoid voice strain. But when I have a lot of typing to do it's a great relief for my hands, and quite good speed.

One annoying thing, which I didn't mention before, is when it repeatedly makes the same mistake when trying to correct a word. For example I said " hi Sandra" which it rendered as "bystander". When I selected this it did not offer the correct option so I spoke again and this time got "high Sandro". I selected Sandro, and said Sandra (as Sandra was not on the list of options), and the program typed Sandro, or centre, again and again until I used the spelling tool. "Hi" also took a few attempts. My point is 1: the list of options often neglects obvious ones, and 2: if I've already rejected Sandro and centre for this occurrence of this word, the program should be able to remember that and not just repeat those mistakes.

(for reference, I'm using the Australian module.)

AWFUL [Posted on 2005-10-30]
This is the first speech recognition software I've ever bought or used and if this is the best out there, well, the industry has a LONG way to go.
The program has a function to teach it when it makes mistakes and to tell it what you are actually trying to say. Sounds like a good idea, except that it doesn't learn and just keeps on making the same mistakes again. Very frustrating. I've gone so far to actually delete words from its own database just so it won't pick that same word again and again and again when it's not the word I want it to pick (after teaching it 20 times, of course).
Customer service? ha! There is no online support and there is no toll free number. That's right, apparently they want you to PAY to call them! What nerve.
If anyone wants a free copy of this software and hardware you can come by my place and pick it out of my garbage on Tuesday morning.

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