I am an instructor for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but I do not work for Nuance.com. I work for a healthcare software company. I primarily deal with the medical editions used by Pathologists in clinical laboratories.

Here are some pointers for those who have not used Dragon, but are thinking of purchasing.

1. Don't skimp on a headset. Visit Nuance.com. Click on Support > Hardware Compatibility List > Dragon NaturallySpeaking > Headset Microphones Current. While it is possible to use a wireless microphone, if you are just starting out, go with a wired, such as a Plantronics DSP-400 (Amazon has this headset for $[...]. It seems cheap, but it is a very good headset). If you can hook the headset up via USB instead of mic in, you will get better recognition accuracy. Additionally, you don't need an internal sound card if you are connecting via USB as the headset comes with its own external sound card.

A good wireless headset will be expensive, and they do not have as good of recognition accuracy as a wired headset.

2. Once you have your headset, connect it to the PC, and install Dragon. It is a straightforward install.

3. You will have to go through an audio and quality check, and then go into General Training. I recommend doing one of the easier readings. You can always go back through and do additional general training. My BIGGEST piece of advice here is speak with your normal voice. Some of my students seem to want to over enunciate, or speak with a different voice during general training. That is only going to set you up for a difficult time when you begin dictating.

4. After your general training, I highly recommend going through the Tutorials. You should be given an option to do this after your general training. If not, you can get to them through the Help Menu on the Dragon bar.

Note: At some point, you will be given the option of having Dragon scan your email and documents. Nuance recommends this, but I don't. You can always have it scan your documents later via the accuracy center. Additionally, I never recommend letting Dragon scan your email. What it is going to do with these actions, is to learn your writing style. Rather than letting DNS do this at setup, move a bunch of documents you have written to one folder, go to the Accuracy Center, and let DNS scan the entire folder.

4. Dragon has some shortcut keys. The number keypad + key is used to turn your mic on and off. The number keypad / key is used to put your mic to sleep, and wake it up. You can go to Tools > Options to change shortcut keys.

5. Remember that while you can do a lot with Dragon, you will find that your best usage comes with using Dragon, the keyboard and the mouse.

6. Set up some Custom Commands. Visit [...] to learn how to set up Custom Commands. There is a book by Larry V. Allen called Scripting for Dragon NaturallySpeaking that will help you out with Advanced Scripts.

7. When you begin dictating, Dragon WILL make some mistakes. It does not help if you yell at your microphone. You will have to continue to train your profile as time goes. If Dragon makes a mistake, resist the urge to delete the mistake and start over. I use this analogy with my students. Think of it as a new puppy. If a puppy makes a mistake, you don't get rid of it (at least you shouldn't), you should correct its mistake. The same goes for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Use the command "Select That" to have DNS highlight the word, and bring up a menu of possible alternate choices. If the correct word is not there, use the command "Spell That" and then spell the word such as: a m a z o n

8. My last tip concerns the Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer. You can get to it through the Accuracy Center, or the Start Menu. Run that after about two weeks of use, and again on a monthly basis. This will fine tune your profile with all corrections and training.

Enjoy Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is a great piece of software.

I'm a freelance journalist who was interested in voice recognition for transcription. I figured it was time to give Nuance a shot. I took the product out of the box yesterday, loaded it, trained the software for about 10 minutes (read a bit of a Dilbert book excerpt, which was entertaining in itself), then loaded up a voice file.

Because the software recognizes one voice only, I played the file in Sony Digital Voice Editor, listened, and repeated/summarized what I was hearing in my own voice via the included headset. The software can't hear what the sound card plays in this case, so this sort of cacophony isn't a problem to NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard. I know this because it worked nearly perfectly once I trained it to write NCAR rather than "and car," which took maybe 30 seconds.

Rough transcription (just getting the info down, spelling and punctuation be damned) usually takes 2-2.5x the actual spoken-word recording time, in my experience; this product is going to pay for itself in a couple of long interviews.

My comments are a warning that I wish I had been given.

I've had various versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking and was very happy with Version 9. Dragon has always been the best voice recognition software for home use. But this version 10 will not install properly unless your cpu handles SSE2. Most of us skip that over in the fine print because we figure if our computer is two years old, it should work.

When I say "not install" I mean that it does an install but then gets hung up in a loop. You cannot turn off your computer and even if you pull the plug, it still runs in the background, not allowing you to remove it. It took some fiddling and a waste of time to finally get it off the computer. Then you have to totally reinstall Version 9 -- I imagine my voice files are gone. This is contrary to Nuance's instructions that if your computer cannot handle V 10, it will notify you and not install.

I have not been able to test this version but on the Nuance site, as well as when I Googled comments on Version 10, both standard and preferred, I found many problems, particularly with Vista. You may be happier if you stay with 9 until they do a better job with the next version. Otherwise, you may be paying for the shipping both ways and waiting two months for the refund.

It would not install on Windows XP and when I read a ZD Net review this flaw was noted. I went to the Nuance web site and there was no patch posed. The fix I am told is to spend 2 hours on the phone with there techincal support that is not even a 800 number. I returned the product for a refund but what a waste of time. Nuance did not even bother to find out why I returned it. Do not mess with this product.Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred

Right out of the box, this software was helping me help my wife transcribe some tapes for her. My only criticisms have to do with editing commands.

For instance, when you open the MyCommands editor, you will have to manually change the font from MS Sans Serif 7, unless that font works for you. This, too me, is pathetic.

Also, I'm somewhat surprised that it doesn't automatically capitalize after a colon, or using the word, "Mr." or "Mrs."

Another frustration for me, is many times while dictating a word like "help," DNS opens "Help" at the top of the Word title bar.

The first reviewer posted that DNS 10 requires SSE2 capability, but didn't mention what it is, or who could be affected. Here you go:

Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
CPUs supporting SSE2
AMD K8-based CPUs (Athlon 64, Sempron 64, Turion 64, etc)
Intel NetBurst-based CPUs (Pentium 4, Xeon, Celeron, Celeron D, etc)
Intel Pentium M and Celeron M
Intel Core-based CPUs (Core Duo, Core Solo, etc)
Intel Core 2-based CPUs (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, etc)
Intel Atom
Transmeta Efficeon
VIA C7
VIA Nano

Notable IA-32 CPUs not supporting SSE2
SSE2 is an extension of the IA-32 architecture. Therefore any architecture that does not support IA-32 does not support SSE2. x86-64 CPUs all implement IA-32, by definition. All known x86-64 CPUs also implement SSE2. Since IA-32 predates SSE2, early IA-32 CPUs did not implement it. SSE2 and the other SIMD instruction sets were intended primarily to improve CPU support for realtime graphics, notably gaming. A CPU that is not marketed for this purpose or that has an alternative SIMD instruction set has no need for SSE2.

The following CPUs implemented IA-32 after SSE2 was developed, but did not implement SSE2:

AMD CPUs prior to Athlon 64, including all Socket A-based CPUs
Intel CPUs prior to Pentium 4
Via C3
Transmeta Crusoe

If you do buy DNS, you will most likely find a forum by the name of knowbrainer.com while google-ing for help. Very helpful folks over there.

The real cost of this software is much higher than what you originally pay. Nuance customer support is a disaster. This software will not work on Windows Vista 64 bit without the upgrade and it may cost you more than $30.00 to get the upgrade. You can not contact the company without having your credit card charged.

Speech recognition would be very helpful since I am disabled and typing is painful. I originally purchased Naturally speaking 9 before the warnings were posted that it didn't support all versions of Vista. Lost money. Since that didn't work, I had wait to buy version 10 and get the update.

I ordered and received Dragon Naturally speaking 10. The software box was unopened and the box seal was intact. I opened the box to get the serial number so that I could download the 64-bit update that I need for Windows Vista. I registered on the Nuance site but it would not let me download the update because the serial number was already registered to a different email address. The software envelope is sealed.

I can not contact Nuance to find out who registered the software because Nuance charges your credit card $9.99 every time you contact their support by email. If you call them its $19.99 You can not send them an email or talk with someone without registering a credit card and agreeing to have it charged. The software will not work on a 64 bit version of Windows Vista without the update.

Nuance has already created problems by not supporting Vista until recently. Version 10 does not support Vista. You must download a 1.2 GB file after registering. This is a huge file. If you have problems it will cost you to contact them, $19.99 for phone, $9.99 to email them, then they will charge you another $9.99 to ship you a CD of the update.

This is shameful but that's normal for this company.

I had purchased an earlier version of this Dragon several years ago. Even after spending a lot of time trying to train the program, I found that it did not work well enough to be usable. But I decided to take the plunge again, and I am happy that I did. Speaking Naturally 10 is impressive. With a minimal amount of setup, the program does a great job at accurately capturing what I say. Sure, it makes a few errors on more unusual words, but they have made the correction process so easy that fixing the mistake hardly takes any effort at all.

I find that I use it for creating rough drafts, and then go back to edit them the old fashioned way. The program has an excellent capability for editing, and I can certainly see that if typing were not possible (for health or some other reason), I could learn to do the entire job without a keyboard. But right now the hybrid approach seems to work best for me. However, I have a feeling that, over time, I will use voice editing more and more, and go to the keyboard less and less.

I was quite impressed with the program's ability to handle long phrases, and complete sentences. So you can dictate in a way that is most comfortable for you. If you decide you don't like what you just said, you simply say "Scratch That" and you get to say it again. This is a lot easier than deleting whole sentences with the keyboard or mouse after you decide to put the phrase a different way. If you want to search the document for a certain word - for example: Amazon, you simply say: Select Amazon and you find yourself with the word Amazon selected. I found this much easier that using the Edit Find commands.

You can also use voice commands to interact with the application. I spent a little time trying to use it to navigate around a web site, and found it more cumbersome that using the keyboard. But again, if circumstances are such that a keyboard is not feasible, then I believe the voice command approach would also be workable with a little practice.

Another cool thing is how the dictation works even in the presence of background noise. I have a noisy airconditioner right behind my desk, and yet I do not notice any degradation in the recognition quality when the air conditioner is turned on.

If you have ever been intrigued with voice recognition, now is the time to jump in and give this program a try.

This review is being written with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard Edition. The only corrections are verbal corrections such as ten to 10.

As you can see, the voice-recognition is excellent. I have been able to use this with most browser windows and office word processor programs. It works, for the most part, with instant messenger windows like Google chat. While supposedly not supported, I have been able to use it with no problems with Open Office.

Due to an injury, I have problems typing for long periods. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 has been a lifesaver when writing papers for college.

After several attemps to load the installation software. I ask for help from their supoort group. They wanted to charge me $19.95 for the call. I tried e-support (that was $9.95) only to be told the Dragon Naturally Speaking would not work on Windows Vista 64 bit systems. I have never heard of a company charging for installation help. So much for good customer service. Amazon allowed be to return it. Now that is good customer service.

When this showed up as a Gold Box item I was excited! Then, I tried to install in on Dell running XP PRO SP2. What a nightmare! Over 3 hours to find help installing - with the help of google and some patch file. 0 customer service from Nuance and they even charge for tech support!!! Free headset was too small. Voice recognition is getting better, but this is NOT the answer!