Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English

When it comes to speech recognition software, Dragon is pretty much the only game in town. Ever since Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9, the accuracy of voice recognition has been very good.

The upgrade from Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9 to 10 improved the accuracy of voice recognition perceptibly; and even version 11 improved the voice recognition noticeably. But Nuance disabled the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking version 11 in Electronic Medical Record programs. They want to sell, Dragon Naturally Medical version, several times more expensive to the healthcare market. And the irony of all this is that despite costing several times more, Dragon Medical 11 does not work any better for electronic medical records than Dragon 10. You just feel being ripped off!

Having used Dragon Naturally Speaking version 12 for 4 weeks now, I think version 12 is actually a DOWNGRADE and not an upgrade because of following reasons.

1. SLOWER: I have been spending a lot of time watching the spinning dragon in the correction window on Intel i3 processor 10 Gb RAM computer. Sometimes 6 seconds for a correction.

2. BUGGY: The Dictation Box keeps popping up in a variety of programs even when you are directly dictating into the program and do not want it. For example, you are dictating a document in Microsoft Word and suddenly the Dictation Box pops up and all dictation starts going to the box instead of Microsoft Word document.

3. Many of the old formatting commands do not work, and you have to learn a whole set of formatting commands all over again. Nuance is claiming lot of new formatting commands but so far I have seen very few new usable commands.

4. It does not work for Electronic Medical Record programs.

5. It does not work on Remote Desktop programs like RDC, Logmein, RDW, JumpDesktop etc.

6. Releasing a program in late 2012, tailgated by Windows 8 release, that does not work well with Windows 8 and calling it an upgrade?

But version 12 does have a couple of advantages.

1. The repertoire of recording devices has increased.

2. Tutorial is nice, as of now only text, and no videos.

According to Nuance, the accuracy has improved by 20% but the improvement is hard to perceive in day to day use because Version 12 is slower. Slight improvement in accuracy for a slower program is not a trade off to call an upgrade. Version 12 is supposed to have social media commands, but I have not used those.

Based on my personal experience with recording or voice inputting devices on Dragon Naturally Speaking version 6 to 12, I found the following.

A. USB Microphones: give the best voice recognition. Andrea NC-181 VM USB High Fidelity Monaural USB Computer Headset (P-C1-1022300-1) is good value for money. And if you are dictating long documents or do dictation stop-n-go piecemeal then connection between microphone and computer is solid.

B. Bluetooth Microphones: Work fairly well, but not as good as USB microphones. PLANTRONIC Calisto Headset with USB Dongle - 81493-02 is very good. The biggest handicap with wireless microphones is that connection between the microphone and the computer keeps breaking and they do not work well for piecemeal stop-n-go and dictation. Every-time you start dictating after a long pause, you have to reestablish the connection.

C. Recording Devices: Sony ICD-MX20DR9 32MB Flash-Based Digital Voice Recorder & Sony ICD-SX712 Digital Flash Voice Recorder give excellent accuracy.

D. Smartphones: I have not had good experience with iOS devices like iPhone or iPod touch and the main problem is that their connection with computer keeps breaking off, in middle of dictation, which is very disruptive when you are dictating a long document or pause for 15-30 minutes. Getting a phone call or text in middle of dictation can be troublesome. iOS devices are probably OK for short snippets for Facebook posting, as shown in Demo, but not long document dictation. it is supposed to work with Android devices too, but I have not used it personally.

If you are already using Dragon version 10 or 11, then stick with it because you will lose a lot of functionality in version 12 without gaining much in accuracy.

If this is the first time you are buying Dragon and you do not plan to use voice recognition for electronic medical records directly in the EMR program or on remote desktop (like LogMeIn, RDC etc.) then go for version 12. Otherwise, stick with version 10 or 11 or grab Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11, [Old Version] at a much lesser price. Version 11 has excellent accuracy, is fairly fast, and is not buggy but does not work with Electronic Medical Records. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred - Medium Box works in most electronic medical record programs and on less powerful computers but is less accurate than version 11. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred [OLD VERSION] works in all electronic medical record programs that I know off. If not at Amazon, you can find older versions at off the beaten path retailers online, very cheaply.

I have been testing speech recognition on the PC for some years. Yes, I remember spending ages training software to my voice and still ending up with a system that made constant errors. By contrast, the current Dragon (and to be fair version 11 and 11.5 as well) are superb. Setup takes only a few minutes, and provided you have a good microphone and a quiet environment it makes few mistakes. In fact, I am dictating this review in Dragon 12 and so far it is perfect.

If Dragon does need correction, and there always will be corrections either because of ambiguous words or simply because you make a mistake, the correction box is also very good.

Fundamentally then, this is excellent software and I do not know of anything better for windows. However I did find a few annoyances. First, I could not get good results from the supplied headset. Dragon's own software reported the microphone either as failed or just acceptable. For my test, I went back to an older Plantronics headset that came with an earlier version of Dragon.

Another thing I found annoying is that just occasionally Dragon pauses for a significant time while parsing your speech.

There are a couple of other things for which I do not blame Dragon. One is that it only partially works with Windows 8; that is, it is fine for standard Windows desktop software but does not seem to work in the new "Metro" environment. Second, the Dragon add-in causes Word 2013 preview to crash. That is understandable since Windows 8 is only just finished and Office 2013 is unfinished; but worth noting if either of these is important to you.

Another question is whether it is worth upgrading. My view is that the upgrade from 11 is probably worth it, but from 11.5 hard to justify unless you need one of the new features.

Disclosure: I am a professional writer and was sent this for review.

Having used Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium 12 for about a month, I must admit that I'm completely baffled. They call this an upgrade?

For starters, this version is incredibly slooooooow. And I mean slooooow. It is slow to launch, and slower to close. Recognition is even slower. The promotional material stated that it was "20% more accurate," but I have yet to discover this unique aspect of this upgrade. The previous version (11.5) is far, far superior and much faster, compared to this clunky dog. And in typical Dragon fashion, technical support is a big run around, especially when you're calling to complain about the new upgrade. No one seems to know anything.

I've found that it no longer allows me direct access to dictate my godaddy webmail; now the dictation box pops up. Not a huge deal, but annoying. There are several other applications that duplicate this process, where in the past, it was just simple dictation to various fields.

My upgrade wouldn't allow me to import my user profiles from 11.5, so I had to start from scratch with a new user profile. More time wasted.

That being said: Dragon is still the leader in speech to text technology (IMO). I'm just surprised that they released this inferior upgrade and called it an "improvement" on previous versions. Purchasers should be well advised to consider an earlier version of the program . . . at least until all of the bugs are worked out of premium 12. Until then, I'm going to dump it an re-install 11.5.

Buyer beware.

UPDATE 1/03/13:

I continue to use version 12, (I have not went back to 11.5, as I stated I would do) and I stand by my above review. Version 12 is very slow to load and often maddingly slow to close. I was hoping that consistent working with the program, including audio training, would improve accuracy. To an extent, it does, but the strange quirks of this "upgrade" just don't make any sense. Often, Dragon takes nearly a full minute to boot up, and when you perform user maintenance to your profile when closing the program, it's not uncommon for this process to take two minutes or more. I might note here that I am using Windows 7 64 bit with 8GB RAM and plenty of space on the hard drive, so there shouldn't be any space/speed issues. I think Dragon rushed this one out, and I hope they make some serious improvements with future upgrades.

UPDATE 1/06/13:

I am closing out Dragon 12, and the program is performing its 'User Profile Mainenance.' So far, it has taken over 4 minutes, and the status bar doesn't even read 50%. This is ridiculous, compared with earlier versions of the program.

On another note: those of you using Dragon for their iPhone will be pleasantly surprised that the new update they released just a few days ago does nothing but CRASH! Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the program twice; no luck. Sure, it's free, but Nuance seems to be intentionally driving away customers. There are newly-emerging companies that are competing in this field of limited players, and this loyal customer (until recently) is happy to explore other options. I now see they've lowered the price for Dragon 12 Premium (again), so maybe they figured out that their most recent releases weren't quite ready for prime time. Do yourself a favor and pick up vers. 11.5. I've learned my lesson, and am dumping 12 in favor of an older, better version. And I mean it, this time.

UPDATE 2/06/13:

As suspected, 11.5 (the previous version) is an upgrade from their "upgrade." Much faster to load and close, speech recognition is (IMO) better than 12. I can't wait for their customer service folks to call me with a 'special deal' when they release their next upgrade. I will demand a refund for vers. 12 before I purchase their latest "upgrade."

One other note that I would add to those considering purchasing vers. 12: When you are dictating in a text box (as I had to do for my e-mail when using vers. 12), there is a good chance that you will LOSE what you are dictating if you do not transfer your paragraphs piece by piece. Numerous times, I'd compose lengthy emails, transfer them, only to have them vanish. VERY FRUSTRATING AND A WASTE OF OUR TIME, NUANCE. When I went back to vers. 11.5, it allows me to dictate directly to the compose window. Much more efficient.

On a positive note: Dragon recently updated their iPhone app, and (surprise!) this one acutally WORKS!