Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred

Reviewed by: hardway

Duration of ownership: 18 Months

Strengths: None. if you have several hundred hours to train, nothing difficult to type, and $100-200 is no big deal, many be worth a try... and that is as kind as it gets.....customer support is poor, so there is little to capitalize on for strengths...Had 5.0. a friend talked me into trying the Dragon 8 Preferred...

Weaknesses: 99% Nope, 96% not likely... 80% starting to get warm

Overall: first had one without a serial number or key code of any kind on the software, without those two items, try to talk with someone at this company,,,hours and have to get lucky as well as stubborn. replaced with product that had serial number and key code...did all the training. followed book and instructions to the letter... retrained.. retrained. 75 hours... getting less than half done as would if typing... went back to typing... on disability after four spine surgeries.. desperately wanted this to work for a western history book that i have been working on for some time.... now the company wants the customer to pay again, as much as before... it is a wonderful idea, some day will be perfected, though unfortunately i feel the company is having the customer finance the process

Reviewed by: tillman

Strengths: easy to install and use; very accurate; time involved to install and do the tutorials - roughly 30 minutes;

Weaknesses: none noted

Overall: It was originally recommended to us by the school as a possible accommodation for our daughter who has difficulty writing. We had our 14yr old daughter up and using it for her homework within an hour. The software is truly amazing. I've suggested it to my parents - one has arthritis in hands, the other the tremors from Parkinsons.

Reviewed by: orcan1

Strengths: voice recognition accuracy is exceptionally Great, Microphone included is a Binus, Good data of words

Weaknesses: sometimes unstable and crashes, Tech Support expensive

Overall: this is a great software in its class out there. it takes dictations very accurately but rarely freezes during it. It is annoying but given the accuracy and the amount of time you save it is well worth. I am not a very fast typer and so this can be useful. But i am sure its going to be a while before i throw my keyboard away!

Reviewed by: gmirez

Strengths: Works decently well, easy interface, good head set. Low training time (about 5 min). Works well with other programs (word, Firefox, IE, excel) when working! Great tool for someone with a disability.

Weaknesses: Easily confuses words with commands. Slow to turn on. Price. Also unknown reason to stop dictating.

Overall: I bought this program only because I'm horrible at typing and I have to do many reports for school and work. The interface is simple, on and off. I've noticed that when the program is started it takes awhile for it to "warm up." The price tag with this program is a little high ($80), but what makes the price worst is if you have a computer without an actual sound card; you have to go out and buy one ($80). It seems that this program, with its ability to work with different programs, would be best for someone with a disability. After using Dragon for 5 weeks, it crashed or something because it doesn't dictate anything I say anymore. It hears what I am saying it just won't type it. I haven't reloaded it yet, because someone at work told me after a few weeks of using Dragon, that MS Word (Office 2003) also has a voice dictation program built into it. This program works great, just as good as Dragon, sometimes better. It doesn't have that slow "warm up" that dragon has and hasn't crashed. It seems that the MS Word voice dictation also uses less computer resources. The amount of spelling errors seems to be about that same as Dragon. I hate to make this sound like a MS Word commercial but you can't beat free. My suggestion is if you already have MS Word and only plan on using voice dictation on MS Word, use MS Word voice dictation. No additional cost except if you don't have a Mic (I just use the Dragon Mic). It has a very simple interface one button with a Mic icon, to turn it on and off. But it does take some extra time for you to train it (about 15 minutes). If you need voice dictation for other things, on other programs then Dragon works well, it has a simple interface, dictation errors are minimal. But if you don't have that sound card on your laptop or desktop, then you will have to buy an actual sound card. The program won't open without one.

Reviewed by: bnlsnider

Overall: Dragon Naturally Speaking Standard 9.0 product description fails to disclose that you cannot import a recording for the software to transcribe - only the preferred edition does this (and it costs a whole lot more) - wish I knew that before I bought.

Reviewed by: jessieqwert

Strengths: quick recognition

Weaknesses: none

Overall: Solid software that speeds up every day work. Misses words every 5 sentences but can be fixed up at the end. I recommend getting a better mic than the one included to improve vox recognition.