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| ![Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PrcsbemaL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | From: Nuance Communications, Inc.
Category: Software
List Price: $199.99
Buy New: $89.99
You Save: $110.00 (55%)
New (17) Used (4) from $60.00
Rating:  252 reviews
Sales Rank: 151
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp Home Edition, Windows Xp Professional
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Preferred
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: A109A-G00-9.0
Model: A109A-G01-9.0
UPC: 780420115095
EAN: 0780420115026
ASIN: B000H2049I
Release Date: July 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Horsepower needed; results assured August 15, 2006
59 out of 60 found this review helpful
This product needs horsepower! Don't buy it unless you have a newer processor and at least a gig of ram. Best excuse I can think of to please your gaming children while being purely rational.
I go back to version 3 or 4, I forget, and unlike many firms these folks hand you new performance each time rather than easy to see features. Version 9 is definitely a step up from version 8. You may not notice these improvements but they are there. I have a noise cancelling microphone that I can now use to dictate while listening to the radio. I can vary my speaking pace from phrase to phrase. And they seem to have crammed the better part of several dictionaries into their revised vocabulary.
In all the years I have owned this product I have never needed to call customer support. I can't see downchecking folks on a product feature I never use.
But what you want to know is who needs it. Blind folks, obviously. And anyone with the sort of dislexia that makes writing a chore. Indeed anyone who finds getting the words out a problem. Then there are folks like me. I can type 60 words a minute but DNS lets me dictate at three times that speed. More to my comfort, I never figured out how to type while lying flat on my back in bed. I dismantled several typewriters trying.
Now these folks, unlike most software vendors, offer a try-out period. Use it for a while... USE IT... and if it doesn't work out for you send it back for a full refund (save always as to shipping). But you SHOULD give it a fair shake as try-out. You will need to invest at least three hours... training, dictating, and correcting to get up to speed. Anyone who expects that it will work perfectly straight out of the box is a fool. It's supposed to learn your voice, your style, your vocabulary. And it is brighter than a three-year-old who might take some months to get to the same understanding. Give it half the patience you would give a three-year-old and you will be astonished.
This is, at the moment I write, my most used and favorite software in all the world.
Joe Dehais
 Superb performance for the most part, but poor support must be considered. August 12, 2006
83 out of 83 found this review helpful
I was impressed with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8, but version 9 is vastly improved in terms of speech recognition. Version 8 was excellent; perhaps in the 95% range. Version 9 comes very close to 100% right out of the box, without any special training.
Nuance is clear about the product requirements. A processor faster than 1Ghz is required along with at least 1GB of RAM (with 512MB minimum free). At least 650 MB of drive space is required. (The previous reviewer apparently did not read these requirements.)
Installation on a computer running Windows XP SP 2 was entirely uneventful. Setting NaturallySpeaking v9 up with two different microphones was a snap. Recognition in a variety of applications was literally 100% without any training. It was, in fact, amazing. Setting the program up to run with a digital voice recorder, however, didn't go so smoothly - and that's why my rating is only 3 stars for what technologically is a 5 star product.
Nuance's tech support is absolutely awful. They charge $ 9.95 even for an e-mail response, which they call an "incident." The manual has virtually no information on troubleshooting. Their online knowledgebase is not well indexed. Or, more accurately, they are running it on a particularly poor platform. Their user community is sparsely used and a lot of the information is useless.
Nuance should learn that turning out a superior product isn't enough. It has to be supported competently as well and it is here that Nuance falls flat on its face.
On the other hand, I recognize that the product is working with two microphones and hopefully I will find the answer to my problem somewhere, some day. As a long-time (and long-suffering) voice recognition software user, I will say the accuracy of NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred is phenomenal. Only the support stinks.
Jerry
 Much improved. I think it's past the "tipping" point. August 10, 2006
171 out of 175 found this review helpful
I have long looked at voice dictation software and been disappointed. I am a professional writer and the possibility of dictating my work at least in draft form has always been so appealing that I tried every generation of voice dictation software going back to the early 1990s.
I received NaturallySpeaking 9 last night and captured the screen cast of the out of box experience. While I did not achieve recognition in the upper 90th percentile, I did achieve recognition significantly better than any I have seen before in previous generations. Fans of voice dictation have long said that, "if only you train the application for a few weeks, you can achieve quite practical levels of recognition. " I imagine that's true, but I've never had an initial experience positive enough to make me try.with NaturallySpeaking, the out of box experience is so good that I am willing to continue working with the application.
While I do own a hefty system, dual processors and a few gigabytes of RAM, unlike the other reviewer I've had a very positive experience using only the motherboard's onboard sound.
I won't give it five stars, because I do think that Nuance is overstating the recognition statistics out of the box: while it's extremely good, better than anything I've seen, it is not, for me, only one or two words in 100 that I need to fix.
I've dictated this review, and made around five corrections. Several paragraphs were recognized flawlessly. Given that I type 90 words per minute I think that I would've been able to type this review in approximately the same amount of time,but for slower typists, or for those of us who occasionally dictate documents into recorders for later transcription, I believe that NaturallySpeaking has reached a tipping point and is worth the money.
Much improved... August 5, 2006
457 out of 473 found this review helpful
The original title of my review was going to be "snookered again," but I've since had a change of heart (and sound card). I originally purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4 years ago which was a total piece of junk. Upon hearing a short review on NPR, it sounded like things had improved.
First off, caveat emptor. You need a good sound card. Nuance is not very helpful here. Their website/docs simply state you need a Sound Blaster 16. I don't know if it's occurred to them you can't purchase a Sound Blaster 16 card anymore (nor would you want to), and they should just bite the bullet and present a list of cards that work well (like they do for microphones). I bought a Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeMusic which seems to work. Second, you need a hefty machine. For me this is a 2.4 GHz dual processor XP workstation with a gig of RAM. The box says you can get by with 512 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor, I'm not sure I believe this.
Once you have the right hardware in place the software seems to work fairly well. This review was dictated using the software. However, I'm not giving them five stars because they still seem to suffer from poor software engineering. As an example, take the set up and training process. I was waiting for a new sound card to arrive and thought I would try using my onboard sound card built into my Dell. The setup process did claim that the sound quality was insufficient. Unfortunately, navigating out of the process was impossible leaving me stuck at the "welcome to general training" screen. When the new sound card arrived, Dragon was still stuck looking at the on board sound system and had no UI to allow me to use the new sound card. My only solution was to disable the onboard sound system which luckily forced Dragon back into configuration mode where I could reselect my microphone parameters. A second example of amateur software development was an error message ("can't load compatibility module") that is caused by Dragon's attempt to build a link between icons on the desktop and voice commands. This message wouldn't be so bad if it were not accompanied by random crashes ("dragon is unable to respond, please close all applications using..."). A recently posted knowledge base article states that the error message only comes up if links are invalid on the desktop, and suggest removing things using RegEdit (I kid you not). After uninstalling a SonyEricsson desktop link that I wasn't using, the message went away along with the random crashes.
In summary, Dragon has matured from snake-oil ware (v4) to usable. However, they need to make an investiment in the non-voice rec modules of their software.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 preferred rocks August 2, 2006
207 out of 216 found this review helpful
As an owner of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 professional I am here to tell you that this version is so much better and I am totally amazed. It makes very few errors and you don't have to train it as much as the other versions. In fact I spent about 20 minutes training program and it works great. One thing I did differently this time is that I bought a high-end noise canceling microphone because I don't like using a headset. Take a look at the Buddy Desktop Mic. It is totally awesome and it works very well with this program. In fact have dictated this entire review using the program and the new mic. Do make sure that you have a high-end computer with plenty of RAM. My system:
Intel Pentium 3.2 GHz
one gig of RAM and NVIDIA 6600 GT PCI express video card.
It took me a lot of research to find the right microphone and program but this is definitely it. I hope this review helps you and happy dictating!
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