Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13

Top positive review

Yes five stars but with one big reservation

April 17, 2017

Okay, let me say first off that my five star rating is conditional.
You have to be REALLY good with tech to install this sucker.
I'm moderately tech savvy but I would never have been able to install the dragon software. This is one thing they just have to fix because it's ridiculously hard.
In fact for me it was no problem because I just had the main problem-solving guy from our company's IT department install it for me.
Despite the installation complexity, I gave it five stars because for the eight months I've been using it, it's just great.
It's accurate and it's easy to correct mistakes. I've no complaints with it at all. It's the best Dragon has ever made.

I've been using voice recognition, Mostly Dragon, For 17 years. I never type anything more then one short sentence. Every document, e-mail, etc. that I have created all these years has been done with voice recognition.
So, I have a tip:
With each new version of voice recognition software that I use, I have found that over time, The voice files get so huge and complex that they begin to degrade and then the software makes more and more mistakes and becomes becomes less and less useful.
So, what you can do is use the new software for a couple months to get its vocabulary just where you want it.
Then, back up your speech files and save them somewhere where you can find them.
When the software starts going all to hell, uninstall the software, reinstall the software along with your backed up speech files.

274 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Cheeky Monkey

BEWARE: This version will not be supported starting 1/1/2019!!!

August 5, 2018

I JUST bought this version in June, and now I get a message saying it will no longer be supported starting 1/1/2019, but I can upgrade to Dragon Professional Individual 15 for the 'low' price of $99?!
So, I bought the software and got less than one year of support. What a ripoff! You're better off just buying Dragon Professional Individual 15, assuming you can trust this company not to just do that same down the road.

37 people found this helpful

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Stephen Nirutam

Yes five stars but with one big reservation

April 17, 2017

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

274 people found this helpful

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11 comment

Young, W.

Respectable with A Few Flaws

August 16, 2014

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

I began using speech recognition three years ago because of the volume of research and writing that I do. The reviews for Dragon NaturallySpeaking compared to Windows speech recognition then seemed to concur that WSR was just as good as anything from Nuance. I have always found Windows speech recognition a tad frustrating in the number of errors in recognition results and the poor microphone volume control. The add-on macros are a nice addition to WSR. With the release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13, I decided to try it to see if it would perform better than the built in Microsoft option.

The installation was painless as well as the initial setup. There is no training required to get started, and the accuracy was surprisingly high without this requirement; however, I have since read one of the training documents because of the amount of text that I have to dictate every day, I wanted to ensure greater accuracy.

Since purchasing DNS13 on August 11, 2014 I've dictated just over 6,000 words; out of curiosity I did track corrections that had to be made, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking's accuracy came in at 99.2%. My VXi TalkPro UC2 microphone is working very well with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, much better than it was with Windows speech recognition.

The product integrates well with Microsoft Word and Outlook, but all of the default hotkeys must be changed otherwise you cannot create formulas in Excel. It is unfortunate that after all of these years that people have requested integration with Microsoft OneNote, the only thing DNS 13 can manage is the ribbon; text cannot be dictated directly into the program.
One thing I do miss about Windows speech recognition is the add-on macros tool where I could build routine formatting commands. I use this extensively in Microsoft OneNote; for example, I would dictate a line and then voice a command that would select the entire line, set the font point size, set tags, and then enter a double line feed.

If you try to dictate into some web forms, such as Amazon's search field, the Internet Explorer Full Text Control browser add-on does crash Dragon NaturallySpeaking (according to the DNS and Windows event logs), and corrupt all right-click context menus in Windows 7; a reboot is required to clear up the problem. With Firefox, the browser add-on simply does not work.

There is a plethora of commands available in DNS 13 to suit whatever level of keyboard or mouse interaction you would rather use your voice to control. I particularly like being able to search the web when something comes to mind, the "search the web" command is great.

Overall, for me, the product is better than Windows speech recognition, and I can continue to work around the browser add-on crashing, missing Microsoft OneNote integration, and lack of custom formatting commands as quality recognition is my number one need. For now, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 gets four stars; address the missing OneNote integration and the browser add-on crashing, and I might bump it up to five stars.

372 people found this helpful

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88 comments

Cheeky Monkey

BEWARE: This version will not be supported starting 1/1/2019!!!

August 5, 2018

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

37 people found this helpful

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11 comment

Richard Gollin

I will never know. Nuance could not run this.

February 24, 2016

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

Is this programme any good? I will never know ! I had been so looking forward to trying it out and saving lots of time for letters etc.

I bought it from Amazon on Jan. 20th and have finally given up any hope of ever running it on February 24th. In the month in between we (myself and everyone I know who can handle computers) have tried everything possible to load and run 'The Dragon'. We have the ghastly Windows 8 and Nuanace Naturally Speaking is specifically designed to work with this. We have had a month of failure!

I would say that Nuance customer relations have tried their best to get the thing working. We have had a correspondence involving 19 E mails. We have had a dozen long sessions with their customer advisors. We have relaunched Windows 8, disabled all anti virus programmes, set up a new and separate Windows account. All to no avail. And why should it have to come to this? Every other programme I have working on the computer has worked straight out of the box!

Above all, if I ever see the words ....
"One or more registry settings are corrupt and your registry permissions prevent Dragon NaturallySpeaking from correcting them. Please run Dragon NaturallySpeaking Setup and select the Repair option."

again I will loose the will to live.

So , if Dragon can not make the thing work on Windows 8 for which it is specifically designed, then I am none too impressed. I am moving to Windows 10 anyway and the Naturally Speaking will not work on that yet.

So, that is a month of my life I will never get back. Now I have to test the Amazon return policy and the Nuance 90 Day return guarantee.

79 people found this helpful

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33 comments

Kathleen

Horrible Software. Look at all the reviews and don't buy it!! INCORRECT MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

January 11, 2017

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

This is the worst software ever! Save your money and don't buy it! It barely understands myself or my husband, much less my son. We all speak English with no accent. Plus, once I start Dragon, Chrome won't work and the other apps on my computer slows to a grinding halt. I've been working with Dragon for 8 hours and it still can't accurately write a single sentence. It get's about 1 out of 20 words correct. Most words it just skips outright regardless of the volume of my voice or complete absence of background noise. What a huge waist of time and money. I FEEL CHEATED. CLEARLY, THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS ARE INCORRECT AS MY COMPUTER SLOWS TO AN UNACCEPTABLE SPEED WHEN DRAGON RUNS.

Update: I gave up on Dragon and tried out Google Docs Voice Recognition Add-On which is free. This product works like a champ. It took less than 3 minutes to set up and has good accuracy. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for what I need. I don't understand how Dragon, an expensive software, can't get its core functionality to work better than Google, who offers a free, simple, web-based solution. The downside is I want my documents to be in MS Word so for now I'll need to copy and paste between Chrome and Word.

34 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

I wasted valuable time trying to install on my computer

January 13, 2017

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

I purchased Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium Version 13. I received the product early 01/12/2017 through Amazon Prime. Amazon provided fast delivery as usual! I wasted valuable time trying to install on my computer. The installation caused my computer to freeze 4 times, and after 6 hours of waiting for the installation to complete I had to call it a day. I was up early 01/13/2017 and tried to contact Nuance, no luck it's as time wasting as the installation. I have never had a problem installing a product onto my computer, simple task. It is the end of day two and have invested another 7 hours. I'm DONE, WTH Nuance? I'm very disappointed!

28 people found this helpful

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Stephen Greene

Borderline fraud: not compatible with current version of Windows 10 -- Who to blame: Amazon or Nuance??

February 6, 2018

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

Bar none, this is the most outrageous, negative experience I have ever had with a piece of software.
After two phone calls to clueless support personnel at Nuance (Dragon), I learn that the version Amazon says is compatible with Windows 10 (Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13) was compatible with the original version of Windows 10, but it is NOT compatible with subsequent versions of Windows 10. And Nuance does not want to upgrade the program because then their Professional version would not be worth anything. My choices: return this and buy the Professional version, or buy an upgrade patch for $100.
I've never encountered such an approach, with any other software.
But why does Amazon advertise that it is compatible with Windows 10? That is simply false, if you have maintained your software in a responsible way.

29 people found this helpful

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11 comment

Ken McWilliams

Product's great, Company is deceptive.

August 20, 2018

Platform: PC DiscEdition: Premium - Disc w/ HeadsetVerified Purchase

I have been using Dragon for many years. I am happy with the product, including this one, Premium 13. However, and this is a very big however, Nuance is a very deceptive and dishonest company. They sell a product, without warning, that they know they will not support in a few months. There is no mention of this fact on their website, just an ad extolling the virtues of their product. I bought Dragon 13 Premium, installed it, then got a notice on the opening screen that "after January 1, 2019, the product will no longer be supported." If you give them an additional $100.00 they will send you a Dragon 15 Professional version. This version has also been out for two years, what's to stop them from dropping support on 15 Pro as well? Is this even legal??? I plan on finding out. Shame on you Nuance. It is looking more and more that noone can be trusted.

14 people found this helpful

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33 comments