Dragon Naturally Speaking 7 Preferred [Old Version]

List Price: $199.99 Discount Price: $78.99

Features:

• Brand new sealed full retail boxed edition.

Accessories:
Microsoft Office XP Standard Upgrade [Old Version]	Microsoft Windows XP Professional Upgrade [OLD VERSION]	CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 11 Upgrade	Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional Upgrade	Digital Image Suite 9

Customer Reviews:

Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred Version 8 Might do it! [Posted on 2004-11-14]
I read all the horror stories about Dragon Naturally Speaking version 7, and was reluctant to purchase the product. I also read reviews about IBM ViaVoice, and was reluctant to purchase that one as well. I subsequently decided to get Dragon Naturally Speaking version 7 based purely on features available. However, my local retailer was out of the product and informed me that version 8 was soon to be released.
I bit the bullet last night and purchased Naturally Speaking Preferred version 8, and hoped that I would not have the same problems that many of the previous reviewers had with version 7.
I opened the package, put in the CD-ROM and proceeded with the install wizard. My first attempt was a relative disaster, giving an error number 1335, explaining that there was a cab file that could not be found because: either there was a network error; or an error reading from the CD-ROM; or that there was actually a problem with the package from the vendor. I searched the CD-ROM and could not find the cab file that had been mentioned in the error message. So, I tried the installation one more time. This time it worked. My next step was to plug in the microphone and headset that came with the package. I went through the initial training of the microphone and setting sound levels, and got an indication that while the levels were not very good, they were understandable.
My next trials and tribulations occurred when I was actually trying to train the program for my voice. This is when my computer started freezing and I had to keep on rebooting the computer. And then I had a brainstorm! I decided to plug the microphone into the back of the computer rather than to the microphone jack on the front of my computer. Ever since I did that, the program has been working wonderfully!
The program is doing a fairly decent job of recognizing my voice after only 30 minutes of training. I did take the time to go through the 14 slide tutorial, and that may have given the program more opportunity to recognize my speech patterns. I have used it in Word Dragon Pad with success. I have had several problems with Internet Explorer since installing the program. I cannot confirm that these problems are because of Naturally Speaking since these problems were beginning after I installed service pack 2.
I will caution you to either put your microphone to sleep or to turn it off when the telephone rings. I forgot to do this and had a very interesting insertion in the file I was working on at the time. Nothing like humor to lighten your day!
I'm using voice recognition to create this review. Because I am new at this, I did correct errors made in voice-recognition. It was easy to do while I was dictating. Doing so gave me practice in learning how this program works, and in the voice commands available for correcting.
I'm running Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred version 8 on a Dell XPS (Pentium 4, 3Ghz, one gig of RAM), using Windows XP home for my operating system. I had previously installed Service Pack two. For now I'm using the microphone that came with the package and do not think I am experiencing adverse results.
When I initially had the installation problems, I did visit ScanSoft web site's technical support. As previous reviewers have noted, there is zilch for technical support. Fortunately, by plugging the microphone into the rear of the computer, I no longer have the computer-freeze problem; so I am not in a position where I need technical support. Let's hope I never actually DO need tech support.
With my limited one day's experience, I will give this product 4 stars, and will return at a later date to give an update on his review.
If you are considering this product, I do say go cautiously, and heed the previous reviews which have been rated as useful by most readers of the reviews. They all have good and bad things to say about the product, and help with the overall decision-making process.
But, maybe this Version 8 has fixed some of the major bugs. Keeping my fingers crossed (and hopefully my tongue NOT tied!).

NY Times Video of how Dragon Works [Posted on 2004-12-02]
DNS 8 is awesome! See the video

[...]

Better than I expected [Posted on 2004-12-18]
I am writing this review by using the actual product itself. I will not correct any mistakes it makes. As you can see, my accuracy level is fairly high, and I am very satisfied with the progress I have made so far. This is only my second day using the product, and already I have used it to send numerous e-mail, Word files, Excel files, and reviews such as this one. I can't tell you how exciting it is to see the spoken word appear as if by magic on the screen without having to touch the keyboard at all. This product is amazing! I will recommend it to all my friends and family without hesitation. I'm pretty confident that over the next few days as it recognises my voice more and more, I will overtake my typing speed and my whole desktop computing experience will become a hands-free zone. This this product will revolutionise the way we were, and I'm fairly sure that in the next three to five years voice recognition software will become far more mainstream and it is today.

My wild tip for getting the best out of this product is to make sure that you have a decent microphone and that you have positioned it correctly, in my case I have found that about 1 in. away from my mouth is just about right. Also, please do not skip the training section, if you spend a couple of hours diligently doing White says, then the payoff will be significant in the future.

So this is the end of my review. I have not use my hands once. There are a couple of mistakes, but I think the accuracy rate is up to about 95% in this review. Pretty amazing when you consider that I have only had the product for two days! My congratulations to all those involved with this product, and I cannot wait for future upgrades. Thank you one and all.

The software works as advertised [Posted on 2005-04-19]
I recently purchased Naturally Speaking 7.0 preferred to use in digitizing our family's genealogy histories, and received the program last night. After playing around with the program last night and this morning, I can report that it works surprisingly well; I had high hopes for this software, and they have all been met. After completing the online tutorials, the software was very efficient in understanding my voice. When it didn't pick up a word (it wouldn't understand me when I said "approximately" or my wife when she said "wow"), I used the add vocabulary function and "trained" the program to understand the new word. I found that the program instantly recognized what I had just added.

It runs well on my Windows XP (AMD 3ghz, 1 gig memory), and I haven't noticed any difference in quality when working in the dragonpad or word (which has been mentioned by some reviewers). The playback function (it will play back a recording of your voice from anywhere in a document you just entered) is very useful in identifying and correcting translation mistakes (wish Preferred version allowed me to save the digital file - only in Pro). I am using a Plantronics Audio90 headset, and am happy with the results (the A90 mic is very good, the earphones fairly comfortable; after an hour's use, I didn't experience any discomfort). The select, mark-up, and cursor moving functions are very intuitive, and I can foresee that, with a little practice and time getting to know the software, it will become second-nature to dictate. Both my wife and I set up user files, and there was no problem moving between each of those.

While I haven't used the program for very long, I'm very impressed, and I'm not easily impressed re: technology. I highly recommend v 7.0 preferred (and, incidentally, can't imagine why anyone would need v.8).

Easier but not necessarily faster than typing [Posted on 2005-07-05]
After retiring (from a career as a scientist), I took a job as a technical writer. My technical background and my interest in writing are good matches for this job, but the fact that I never became a touch typist proved to be a significant liability, especially since I record my thoughts while referring to source material. For this reason, I turned to voice recognition software. After surveying the voice-recognition software that was available, I purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking version 7. My computer was relatively new at the time and featured a 2 GHz processor, Audigy sound card, USB2 ports, and 512 MB of RAM, so I was comfortable with its ability to efficiently run the software. I have used this program for about six months, and the results are decidedly mixed.

Despite having gone through the recommended training program, I find that the software continues to make a significant number of errors. The errors are never typos, and thus detected by one's spelling checker; they are errors of word selection, and thus careful editing is a must. Many of the errors are ones that you would expect - for example, "an" or "in" for "and" - but in some instances the choice of word by the software is so bizarre that if I do not catch it immediately, it is not apparent to me later, even from context, exactly what word I intended, which sends me back to the source material, and that of course takes time. Good enunciation and optimal positioning of the microphone are, of course, important. But I have found some words that the software missed by a mile no matter how carefully I enunciated or positioned the microphone. I have also found that some words that I asked the software to select and correct continued to be misinterpreted, suggesting that the software does not always learn from the corrections. So while dictation is easier than typing, editing for the inevitable errors results in dictation being no faster than had I typed it myself. I should point out that I have always dictated to DragonPad, where accuracy is supposed to be highest, and then cut and pasted into Word. One problem that I have noted with DragonPad is the apparent absence of an autosave feature, and I have lost material on occasion as a result.

In surveying voice-recognition software, I noted the evaluations of microphones of several websites that dealt with voice recognition. As a result, I purchased a Sennheiser ME3 USB microphone, which was top-rated by one of the websites. Before making the purchase, I debated whether to buy a high-end microphone or a digital recorder. I settled on the microphone because of my inexperience using digital recorders for dictation and because of their cost. In retrospect, I wish I had purchased a digital recorder because of the freedom it provides: one must be at one's computer to use a microphone, and this I have found to be more inconvenient than anticipated.

Based on my experience, this software makes the job of getting one's thoughts on paper easier but not necessarily faster than had one gone to the trouble of typing it. And woe to the person who fails to carefully edit what this software records. Does version 8 represent a significant improvement over version 7? At this point, I'm not prepared to pay to find out.

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