Dragon software reviews cnet

When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Feb Review summary Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 voice-recognition software lets you use voice commands to produce text documents and surf the Internet, thereby minimizing your typing.

It fills a need for PC users who can't or won't use a mouse and a keyboard. Dragon offers intuitive speech commands and lots of hand-holding to spare you from intimidation. It can learn your speech and writing patterns in order to deliver impressive, professional results. Its transcription and networking features should serve business users and legal pros well. Adobe Photoshop CC. VirtualDJ Avast Free Security.

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Windows Windows. Most Popular. New Releases. Desktop Enhancements. Networking Software. Trending from CNET. Visit Site. You'll also need a noise-canceling headset microphone, a bit or equivalent sound card, and a DVD drive.

Preferred Mobile adds a digital voice recorder. Make sure to uninstall an earlier version of Dragon if you have one. And if you already have the latest version on a PC, don't overwrite it with a lesser-featured version that may be bundled with a new, supported digital voice recorder. Installing Dragon 10 on two Windows XP machines took around 20 minutes without incident.

Unfortunately, Windows Vista installation was a nightmare. Or had it? We were caught in a catch of circular commands after rebooting more than a dozen times. The issue was related to a known bug in Windows Vista.

We spent what amounted to more than two hours with a polite, bright tech support representative who offered a workaround. Once it's running, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 adds a small feature bar that sits atop other open applications on your desktop. The well-organized pull-down menus haven't changed from the past.

The text will "type" pretty much wherever a cursor appears, including word processing pages, Web form fields, and the included DragonPad. Dragon performs a microphone check during setup. When our volume was too low on the Windows Vista laptop, we couldn't use the software. Somehow reading our frustrated mind, it typed "I hate you I" when we said, "Type. We reverted to the same headset packaged with Dragon 9, with better results.

Training is optional, but we recommend stepping through its paces to get Dragon up to speed with your speech patterns. The software can also scan the documents and e-mails on your computer to look for commonly used words. And there's improved QuickVoice formatting. For instance, now you can utter the command, "Underline The Grapes of Wrath " to underline the book's title, which took two steps with previous versions.

In addition, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 introduces Voice Shortcuts that enable you to look things up online quickly in your default browser.