Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home ( v. 11 , complete package)

This product seems to function pretty well. I do not like having to say period after each sentence but oh well. I also do not like having to be tied down by a corded microphone and or headset when we have this wonderful thing called Bluetooth technology. For whatever reason nuance has decided to not support this technology with the home version. I'm speaking for myself when I say $150-$250 is just too much to spend solely for the purpose of using a Bluetooth microphone. One would think that there would be a patch or some sort of upgrade to make the software work with Bluetooth. When I clicked on the live chat button on nuance website, response was pretty quick but their resolution was extremely inadequate. In fact they gave me a phone number to tech support that put me in a loop and eventually hung up on me. Then I went back to the live chat support and got the same person i got be the first time and she could care less. So I hope whoever uses this product does not need technical support as they are unwilling to spend any time or give any suggestions to people that are using their lesser expensive product.

I am terribly disappointed and frustrated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 11.5. I have previously purchased and used versions 9 and 10 Premium with very few problems, but was forced to get version 11.5 because I was now running Windows 7 64-bit. I have encountered frequent and previously unknown problems such as the program locking up, the program causing the entire computer to freeze, the program losing user profiles and claiming they are corrupted when they are not, and the inability to find any support or any answers from online forums. When these problems occur without warning or any apparent reason, I am often forced to close all programs, save all documents in progress, shut down the computer, reboot, and start all over again--so much for this tool being an aid to efficiency!Nuance support is a joke and nonexistent. I am not the only one to notice these problems-see reviews of this product on Amazon. Now they are offering and "upgrade" to version 12 premium for only $99, but it would seem much preferable (and improve their image) if they would just acknowledge these problems in version 11 and issue a free patch. Over the years I have enjoyed using Dragon NaturallySpeaking and want to do so, but the software problems with this version are severe and have shattered my confidence in this product and Nuance. If only Nuance had some competition in this area? If anyone has encountered these problems and has figured out any solutions, I am sure I would not be the only user out there who would very much appreciate any help that can be offered!

This version was a noticeable improvement over my Dragon Naturally Speaking, version 2.02 that ran on Windows 95, more than a decade back. I bought a Windows 7 computer (Compaq Presario PC, model # CQ5320F). The 2.02 version of Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) was designed to run on a 300MHz processor and perhaps 300-500 megabytes of memory. This version 11 is supposed to run on a netbook, according to what was said on the DNS box. When the program was installed in the Compaq it complained I didn't have enough RAM to run and I have 3 GB of RAM! The program installed and ran perfectly well in spite of this warning.

I don't know how many times I tried to register on line, but Nuance's website wouldn't take my serial number! It was one character too long. I tried one final time to register DNS when they sent an email saying I failed to register. With the URL that was given in that, I think I finally registered my copy?

On my computer the included headset and the program is very speedy and accurate. I like how DNS will dictate into just about anything, and not just an editor that is part of the program, as is the case with my 2.02 version of DNS. The only thing the old DNS could do outside the special editor is that it would paste by voice command in different sorts of open spaces designed to take written input. In version 11 you can actually dictate in many of these spaces, such as Netzero email. For the variety of programs that DNS has made an impressive advancement.

Although I paid less than half price for it, because I got it during a Black Friday sale, I found that a little pricey, and I would never even have gotten it at full price. For what it does it does it very well. Since DNS is the only speech recognition program around, if you need one you're going to get this.

It is interesting how they have kept some of the things that were part of DNS from over a decade ago. One of the voice training stories for voice recognition , such as, "How Do Computers Work?" is still there. It is quite amusing, though, you might not to get to find that out since the training part of the program setup takes so little time and reading.

I would recommend this program, even it is still unknown to me if I ever got my copy of DNS registered? I would also wonder about the activation. I know my copy is workding fine. I will be happy with it, if it continues to do so.

Updated on Dec 15, 2011

I have just been recently benn trying this (By the way it is updated to 11.5 over the Internet, for free) on an Asus netbook Eee PC 1001PXD with 2GB of RAM. I am impressed! This is a type of program that you would want to use with a netbook, and with this particular netbook,it deserves an excellent rating.

Updated on Jul 16, 2012

I had found that it worked best with an external microphone. However, after I put a SSD into my netbook, it has worked consistently well with the internal microphone. Windows 7 including the Starter edition accesses the hard-drive quite often (turn off indexing especially with an SSD) and the constant chatter of an HDD is a source of noise that DNS doesn't like!

One of the best places to use DNS is in a netbook, and if you get consistently accurate recognition. Things are usually great. If you plan to use DNS with a browser, I find it is usually better to bring up the browser before DNS.