Superb performance for the most part, but poor support must be considered., August 11, 2006

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...

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...

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...