Rating: 
Summary: Worst product
Review: After installation, the product wouldn't even launch - says dns files not found. I tried calling them and looked into their website - NO USE. I spent 3 hours for NOTHING.This is a worst product with NO Support. I will return this DAMN product and demand my money back.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm sorry, I cannot endorse this product.
Review: badly in need of some voice recognition software after a disability, I tried this product and was reasonably impressed at first . The software is excellent in terms of being able to translate human voice . however, the following problems ensued in the months to follow: 1. the software took a long time to start and initialize each time. 2. the pause after each sentence was about two seconds, which became tedious. 3. sometimes the software would lock up or stop dictating. I would have to turn the software microphone off, which sometimes took a half a minute . 4. each time I turned the microphone on, it would miss the first couple of sentences and take a long time to translate them (incorrectly). 5. I found that I had to sometimes talk like a robot, in order for the machine to really pick up my articulation. This could be just my own personal thing, but it's worth mentioning. 6. there were a lot of problems I had with browsing, related to one bug in particular. If you were dictating into a text area, such as a "Give us your feedback" box, on Amazon.com, it would often mistake words for links on the page. It would take the links, instead of writing the text, deleting all of the information you had just voiced in! As soon as the novelty wore off, I realized this product truly did not help me. I switched to IBM Via Voice, and I do not have any of the above problems -- in fact, I look forward to using it each time. I can I assure you that I gave Dragon its fair chance, by reinstalling it, and referring to the appropriate technical advisory information. The Via Voice is a much better product, so much that I can only rate this product two stars simply because I was able to actually use it to some degree.
Rating: 
Summary: NY Times Video of how Dragon Works
Review: DNS 8 is awesome! See the video
[...]
Rating:
Summary: Get ready to pay more later
Review: Dont expect any help from Scan Soft if you have any problems with this program. This is a huge and buggy program that will conflict with a bunch of different software since it has to integrate itself into anyh program that accepts text entry. Scan soft limits tech support to one phone call, $19.95 per call after that, even if your issue is ongoing. I was told to uninstall and reinstall (how creative) and on the reinstall found that the CD was corrupt. Replacement CD's are only $25 + $5 S/H. How nice.
Scan Soft will not back up their products, and probably make more money on tech support and replacement for buggy and defective products.
Looks good on the description, but good luck if you are not up and running right out of the box.
Rating:
Summary: Bad software
Review: Dragon Naturally Speaking 7.0 preferred is an example of the worst of software. There are two major service packs that are needed for it, these are huge and take overnight to download on a modem line. 7.0 was obviously not ready for customers but was shipped anyway and the company continued work on the product to make it usable. The user be damned. The company shows its contempt for the customer by providing essentially no customer support. Sure, you can pay for it at 20 bucks a call.
The installation of the original product is filled with false error messages and the installation of the service pack is also deadly. After all is done my Internet Explorer was adversely affected. Find another product or wait for ScanSoft to realize that the customer is important.
Rating: 
Summary: Dragon Adds Bells and Whistles - And Ease Of Use
Review: First, unless you are extremely serious about using voice to enter text, this program is not for you. It doesn't allow you to surf the net easily, as advertised. Many of its features, while sounding great, are more of a pain to use than doing it manually. (Similar to spending an hour on the web trying to answer a question or picking up the telephone and have a reference librarian answer the question in less than five minutes.) One more disadvantage: the headset that comes with the Professional version is not adequate for voice recognition at the level you need if you are serious about using this program. You need to buy a USB headset. After looking at several, I chose the Plantronics DSP-500, which retails for about $. You can spend less and get lower quality, but then, why bother? I had two problems with installation on my XP Pro system. The installation program was able to create the folder for the program, but I had to create the Users folder manually. Not much of a problem, but it could confuse someone who isn't familiar with computers.
But enough with the problems. I'm an author, so I spend lots of time inputting data. My arms, wrists, and fingers end up aching by the end of the day. While this program isn't perfect, it suprised me with its level of accuracy, and its ability to read words in the context of a sentence (such as too, two, and to). The training time took less than 15 minutes. I still find that I have to make mouse movements. Some things are easier to do manually. One of the advantages of the Professional version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is that it works in programs other than Microsoft Word. In fact, I used the program to write this review. So, if you are in a quiet environment and your throat isn't sore, this can be a great timesaver. It is rated at recognizing speech at approximately 160 words per minute. My major problem is that I don't think that fast.
Overall, this is a terrific program for voice recognition. Voice recognition is still not at the technical level we might wish for, but this newest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking takes another step forward toward the realization of that goal.
Rating:
Summary: WordPerfect? Lawyer? This Product's For You
Review: First, yes, it works with WordPerfect perfectly. Prior to buying it, I wasn't sure that it did. None of the reviews or the product information told me whether it was compatible with WordPerfect. I was glad to find out that it was compatible. No problems whatsoever (and I'm a first time user).
Second, I am a lawyer. Wasn't sure it would learn "lawyer words." No problema. The program lets you load up your legal documents into its system and learns the words. Very, very easy to do. As such, when you start spitting out legal jargon, it spits out the correct words.
ONE HUGE TIP: This product dictates virtually perfectly. I was blown away how advanced it was. HOWEVER, it does not do a good job of moving the cursor around when you give it a verbal command to do so. HUGE ADVICE TO YOU: Use the mouse to move the cursor around the document. Don't try to use verbal commands to move the cursor. It gets to be TOO frustrating and might make you want to quit. However, once I decided to use my mouse to move the cursor, then I loved it.
Fourth, don't be intimidated by the fact that you must practice. I practiced reading text for about an hour a morning for two weeks. That was it. By that time, your program knows about 99% of your vocabulary and recogizes your voice.
Fifth, the program dictates at your normal talking speed. It's totally awesome. You don't have to sit and talk like a robot. As for me, I tend to talk very quickly. This program has no trouble keeping up.
Sixth, read the review of the dude named Aaron C. Schepler. I don't know the guy, but his tips were totally on the money. I bought the Plantronics Audio 90 headset upon his advice. It was pretty cheap (less than $50) and works perfectly.
Lawyers, this product is IDEAL for summarizing depos. Helps cut down on carpal tunnel syndrome.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Time-Saver
Review: I am a counselor and need to make notes on the counseling sessions I have with my clients. Dragon has enabled me to speed up that process tremendously. I was finding my hand getting weary of writing halfway through the day and now I can let the computer do all the work. I thought it would be hard to set up the software to my voice (since I'm southern), but it wasn't hard at all and not time-consuming like I thought it would be. I highly recommend this product for anyone who has to do a lot of documentation.
Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Bug Free but Tedious
Review: I appear to be the oddball, because my experience with Dragon Naturally Speaking has been the opposite of the other reviews on the site. The good news is that I'm running it on Windows XP (Home) and have NOT had any of the technical problems mentioned by others, although the software is resource intensive (it can slow the system down). But I didn't expect anything else from voice recognition software, which involves a very complex task. The bad news is that, after properly training the software for an extended period and using it for a couple of months, I've pretty much stopped using it because it is tedious to use. The error rate is still between 5-10%. Although that doesn't sound like a lot, it means every 10th or 20th word is wrong. What's more, the errors are not always obvious (e.g. they are real words and are not detected by spell check, but they make your writing sound like you're on serious drugs). The result is that proofing your work is a tedious task at best. I type fairly quickly (50-60 WPM) and with reasonable accuracy. My typos are easily identified by spell check (I don't tend to insert the wrong, but correctly spelled, word the way Naturally Speaking does!). Ergo, I can type and proof faster than I can dictate and proof, which defeats the main reason I bought Naturally Speaking (to speed up my reply to sometimes voluminous email correspondence). My conclusion: The "state of the art" for voice recognition is not yet where it needs to be to pay off for a halfway decent typist. On the other hand, if you're a poor typist or have a physical handicap that makes typing difficult or impossible, it might be worth a try.
| 
