Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard

Dragon 10 tech support is almost non-existent (2010-03-09) : 1/5
I do not know how to type. I have to type this by "hunt and peck" because this product, Dragon 10, does not run on my Dell Netbook. Tech support acts like they have the solution, but their suggestions do not work. I am sorry I upgraded from the Dragon 8 that ran on my old laptop.
Blows Windows Speech Recognition Away (2010-03-09) : 5/5
Hi, I'm no computer expert, which is why I was amazed by the diference between Windows Speech Recognition (installed with my Vista Home Premium 32-bit OS) And Dragons Ver. 10. I have tried to work with the Windows Version, and it was fustrating, in-accurate, and a waste of time. I then bought Dragon Version 10, and my faith was restored in software of this type. It is easy to use, and it works. In every program and application I have tried so far, it has worked extremely well. As I said before, I'm no computer whiz. I was thrilled when I spoke into the headset, and saw what I was saying appear before my eyes. Take the time to read through the training, and learn the commands. Try it for yourself, believe me, it is worth $50.
AMAZING (2010-03-08) : 5/5
Everything warned me that this program would NOT work on a wee underpowered netbook with a 1.3 gHz single core processor (Toshiba T115-S1100) SO I ordered the cheapest, scaled-down version of Naturally Speaking (NS) figuring I could eat the $ loss when it failed to install and work! I did download the CPUID CU-Z utility (found online) to run a diagnostic to see if my processor had SSE2 (?), a major prequisite, and once I got that confirmation it was... go 4 it!

Lo and behold, against all odds, NS Standard installed with ease and speed (on 32-bit Win 7 Home Premium) and continues to work flawlessly!

I did opt for the Plantronics DSP 400 and it may have provided a boost of some kind over the headset that came bundled with NS. The DSP 400 is also a great product and I recommend you spend the extra bucks to get this marvel - it comes with its own sound card - a bonus for those saddled with weak sound cards like frail netbooks or small cheap notebooks..... more than a placebo, the DSP 400 is the real deal.

Back to NS, a fantastic program, the learning curve takes maybe 40-minutes to set up "your" speech pattern. I found that slowing your speaking rate reduced errors considerably (doh!) and it might take a few days/2000 words for NS to get accustomed to your idiosyncrasies. No biggie I assure you. The more you talk the better it gets.

I rate NS 10-Stars.


Not as advertised (2010-03-03) : 1/5
I bought this for my 10 year old dislexic child. It said it recognizes words "instantly" with "no special script reading". In fact you have to read 10 pages with high accuracy to train it. Might as well ask him to read the phone book. Without the training, it doesn't work at all.




Does Not Work Well With WordPerfect X3 (2010-02-26) : 3/5
I am an author and like to dictate my notes as I'm writing. I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 but it does not work well with WordPerfect X3. I had to buy a copy of Microsoft Office. It works very well with Office. Since I write science fiction, I have unusual names of planets and people and attempted to get Dragon to recognize these names. It was a royal pain in WordPerfect but seems to work much better with Office. I use a netbook and had to purchase a USB sound card also. It is better than Vista's voice recognition software though.