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I have been reading about Dragon Naturally Speaking software for some years now, but have been reluctant to take the plunge primarily because of the seemingly large number of negative reviews surrounding it. I recently convinced myself, however, to just go ahead and try it out and see what MY opinion of it would be.
It's been kind of a complicated road but, in the end, has finally worked out well. First, I made the mistake of ordering the software directly off of the Nuance site since it appeared that I would be saving $30 by doing so. From the description on the Nuance site, it appeared that there would be a headset included with the purchase. Not being a terribly bright fellow, I bought it only to discover that (1) it was for a download only and that (2) no mic-headset was included. It took quite a while to initially download the program and there was a lot of futzing about getting it installed; not very smooth at all. But eventually, I got it to work. Since I didn't have a headset-mic or even a stand-alone mic to use, I simply used my webcam mic. That worked okay, but while the results were very surprisingly good, there were a number of mistakes which was well short of the advertised 99% accuracy mark. I accepted this since I was using a mic that was not really intended for this kind of situation. Now here's the level of my stupidity: I kept thinking that the headset (which, as previously mentioned was described as being included) would be shipped to me. I saw nothing to indicate that this was indeed the case so I emailed Nuance customer support for the answer to which they responded back to me in about 2 days. A number to call was provided to me to call. I was told by Nuance CS that no headset was in fact included. I asked for a refund, deciding to re-order using Amazon instead. This is what I should have done in the first place. Getting the refund has been a far more lengthy wait than seems necessary. When I ordered DNS through Amazon. I also ordered the Andrew NC-181VM USB mic-headset since these received generally high praise from a number of reviewers for use with DNS (see my separate review on these).
Now, after that lengthy spiel, on to Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12: In a word, Amazing! This is the stuff of sci-fi made real. Coupled with the Andrea headset, and after doing only the preliminary training, DNS worked almost flawlessly right out of the box. I haven't yet (and probably never will) "scientifically" assessed the actual accuracy of DNS, but if it isn't the advertised 99%, it's pretty darn close. That's been my experience so far, at least. I still have a lot to learn and remember about some of the voice commands that you can use, and especially some it's more esoteric abilities as far as controlling programs and such, but so far I'm completely impressed with what DNS can do. I was concerned because of the several negative reviews about Premium 12 being less than some previous version or another. I honestly can't address that and, quite frankly, it's now become completely irrelevant to me since Premium 12 has met and exceeded any expectations I had of it. It just flat works and it works amazingly well. If some previous version somehow worked better for some other person for whatever reason, more power to them. My only objection to some of those opinions is when they attempt to prevent the purchase of Premium 12 based on their objections. I think it is perfectly acceptable to state one's own experiences and biases about a product, but quite another to block the purchase of that product or tool that I believe many others if not most would find perfectly acceptable and useful without having to resort to some outdated and perhaps less supported version of the product. I'm all for fair and reasonable criticism of a product, but some sense of reality needs to enter into our opinions.
Which brings me to my criticisms of Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12. DNS is not without it's flaws. The installation process, even with the CD was somewhat on the kludgy side. First, it was on the lengthy side, but that is okay with me, except that during this lengthy installation process I received at some point mid-way through installation some kind of error message that I didn't understand that seemed to indicate there was some kind of installation failure and told me something had not completed successfully. I thought "Oh, great....Now I've got either buggy software or I'm going to have to try to start over again". But once I clicked the error message off, installation proceeded on happily and finally finished. And then, of course there was the whole registration process to go through (actually, I had to enter the same information--serial #, etc--at least twice) before I could actually start using it and tackle the preliminary voice training sessions. Since there was that installation hiccup along the way, I thought that something was surely going to prevent the program from running or cause some other bump along the road, but it hasn't happened yet, so I guess all is well in spite of the nagging feeling that something might be "missing" that needs to be there. In spite of the lengthy and somewhat convoluted installation process, I can still easily justify the 5 Stars I have given it. In the big picture of the world of software, this has to be one of the giants along with being, perhaps, even a potentially life-changing tool for many people for many reasons.
All I really know and really care about now, however, that DNS Premium 12 is running and seems to be running flawlessly. The amazing thing about this incredible tool is that it "tracks" very rapidly. I'm a pretty fast typist and I initially thought that I could probably type faster than what DNS could keep up with. Not so. I can start blabbering at a pretty good clip and DNS seems to hang right in there with me, even though I have to pause my flow to insert the punctuation, etc as I rattle on. The main "catch" here is that you have to have your thoughts pretty much under your belt already before speaking. If you are halting and stopping and kind of fumbling around as you speak, DNS doesn't handle that all that well. That is one advantage of typing; you can pause and think about what you want to say at any point in the flow without everything getting all hung up and bumfuzzled. With DNS, you will find yourself doing more corrections if that is the case.
I really don't know how many people out there might actually "need" Dragon Naturally Speaking. I think if you are a troubled or slow typist, this would be an absolute boon to you. If you are a lousy speller, DNS handles spelling corrections extremely well, usually on the fly. I am neither of these things; I am both a fast typist and a pretty good speller most of the time. Nevertheless, I still find DNS an incredible tool. I must say that it may take me a while to find ways for me to use it and truly justify it's purchase. But being the geek that I am, I will do my best to find a way to put it to good use. So, for right now, I stand extremely impressed with what I regard as among the more useful innovations in the software realm. Just as an aside: before investing in DNS, I did try out the built-in Speech Recognition feature of Windows 7. It works fairly well and is impressive to a degree in it's own right. In my opinion, however, it doesn't hold a candle to DNS and quite frankly, suffers from too many weaknesses that would render it too frustrating for me to use for most purposes. It just doesn't offer nearly the accuracy or sophistication of DNS.
In conclusion, I can highly recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12 to anyone seriously interested in getting their feet wet using speech to text translation. I hope you will find it as amazing as I have.
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