Nuance - I Speak Dragon

dragonstories2011 Posted: 06-02-2011 12:19 AM

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I began using Dragon Naturally Speaking in about 1998, learning it so I could teach the attorneys how to use it.  Although we had some technical issues with  equipment, we managed to make it work.  In 2005, I was doing so much work analyzing and preparing summaries of medical records, discovery documents and such, that my carpal tunnel began to flare-up.  I purchased DNS for my personal use.  Training was brutal as I really did not have enough time for "down-time" but stuck with it.  Over the last few years, my husband and I started using Windows speech recognition instead.  Training was minimal, but since most of our work is produced in WordPerfect (I am and always will be a die-hard WordPerfect person despite mastering Word), Windows speech is not compatible with WP.  My old version (8.0) was too old for our new computers and I knew that Nuance had improved Dragon, so I bought 11.0 version.  It was so wonderful that the training required was not as bad as in 1998 or 2005.   My work requires a combination of legal and medical terminology, and the program improvements in analyzing documents in various file directories made my down time minimal. I was surprised at how basic DNS understood medical and legal terms without training!  My non-techy husband bought an iPad even though we are die-hard window people.  He has found the Dragon version for his iPad to be extremely easy to use and very little training required.  This is an important factor for users who are not literate with computers, don't have the time to train and have no typing skills.

I couldn't be happier with the newest release.  Thank you Dragon for making word processing easier since typing with tendonitis and onset of arthritis makes typing painful.  I remain productive despite aging challenges.  Dragon will continue to be a required program for all our computers just like WordPerfect, Word, email and other business programs!