Testimonials

“Dragon, Version 9 = Cloud nine for anyone needing dependable speech recognition software. I work as a lawyer and I spend an hour or two each day using Dragon. I know that there are millions of people out there who could make good use of voice recognition software. Dragon allows me to give my hands a break, even though I am a proficient typist. Dragon works so well that it seems like magic. The software packaging indicates that Version 9 is faster and more accurate than typing. This is an understatement, in my experience. According to tests described on the package, most people can dictate 140-160 words per minute. A 900-word document can thus be produced in six minutes. In my experience, I suspect that Dragon allows me to cut my writing time in half when I am summarizing meetings and depositions. I use Dragon to produce the initial drafts of most of the long documents I write. I find first drafts to be especially frustrating to key-in. When doing first drafts, one’s mind typically races ahead and sometimes morphs in midstream, leaving one’s semi–nimble fingers behind. It is truly a joy to painlessly turn one’s thoughts or scribbled notes into a highly accurate document filled with text. Dragon is fully capable recognizing one’s voice to make edits too, though I typically switch over to my fingers on the keyboard when I make numerous tedious edits to turn first drafts into second or third drafts. I create the first drafts of almost all of my blog posts using Dragon. It is easy on the fingers. Dragon keeps up with you. It allows you to think instead of focusing hard on pecking away at the keys. There is no need to slow down in order for Dragon to work. I’ve bought copies of Dragon 9 for two friends. They have both become converts. In fact, they are preaching the virtues of this product, just as I am doing. And, yes. I dictated this submission using Dragon 9…” - Eric V.

“I am an intellectual property lawyer. Intellectual property is a paper intensive field. To assist me in doing work at home, I began using Dragon in the 1990s, beginning with Version 4. I have used every version since then, including Version 9. Each new version has been an improvement, but the first major improvement came with Version 8, and then Version 9 brought it to an even higher level of accuracy and ease of use The real value of Dragon did not become apparent until I retired in May, 2003, and moved to Cape Cod. I continued to be Of Counsel with my former firm. I was still faced with a paper crunch, and I had no secretary. Dragon 9 came to the rescue. With Version 9, I now dictate e-mails, opinions, briefs, and all other manner of legal things. It does require careful proofing to remove stray words which sneak into the documents, and to correct verb tenses. But even with this, the saving in time is remarkable. To illustrate, within the past four years I have had to prepare opinions as an expert witness in two cases. In the first, I was still at my office in Washington, DC,, with a secretary. I dictated the opinion, and then spent a significant amount of time revising the draft. In the second, I was on the Cape, without a secretary, and had to rely entirely upon Dragon. The words popped up on the screen almost immediately after they were dictated. There was no loss of thought or context. Editing on the fly became a breeze. It took me about half the time to prepare the second opinion as it did the first one, even though both were approximately the same length. Kudos to Dragon. One of the remarkable features of Dragon is the ability to train it to use strange words. As a trademark lawyer, I am constantly confronted with corrupted spellings of words. With Dragon, I can generally train it to spell these words in their corrupted form. This is a real blessing. In short, Dragon has made my retirement a joy. I am able to get my office work done quickly and efficiently, without a secretary, early each morning, and my office in Washington appreciates the fact that I have avoided the overhead of a secretary. The rest of each day can then be spent doing whatever I personally choose to do. Not a bad life! This story has been dictated using Dragon.” - Henry L.

“I am an attorney engaged in elder law practice. I was recently meeting with an elderly client who was profoundly deaf, and practically unable to communicate with me. This man was extremely bright, articulate and quite frustrated with the difficulties he was experiencing in life. We were having great difficulty communicating the necessary details. I was growing quite frustrated in my attempts at gathering information. It occurred to me to use my Dragon Naturally Speaking program to communicate with him. I enlarged the type face to 24 points, turned my computer screen toward him, and proceeded to dictate my comments, and repeat his remarks. It worked beautifully. He was able to see exactly what we were talking about, correct any miscommunication, and understand everything. We ended the meeting in perfect agreement. Were it not for your product, I would have been unable to meet his needs. Thank you!” - James L.

“I am a practising attorney in High court and we are regularly giving dictations everyday hundreds of pages. Availability of stenographers was always an issue. With Dragon 9 all my dictation related issues are resolved. I can give dictation even at 12 in night from my home. The accuracy is almost 97% i must say and comparing to typing its very fast. I have drafted hundreds of petition and software actually learns with experience…I am extremely happy and satisfied with software I recommend it to all lawyers and professionals.” - Dipen S.

“Court reporters take it down fast; some of us up to 350 words per minute. I am a "voice writer" court reporter who takes it down with my voice. Dragon has opened the future to voice writers, some of whom achieved the NVRA Realtime Verbatim Reporter (RVR) certification. The NVRA RVR test I passed requires minimum accuracy of 96% in a 5-minute test where the first and fifth minutes are at 180 wpm, second and fourth minutes are at 190 wpm, and the third minute is at 200 wpm. I've used speech recognition since beginning my court reporting career, over the years collecting innumerable tricks and tips to coax much more out of the speech recognition engine than the designers had envisioned. I wrote a book on the subject called Voice Writing Method, I'm on my second book, and I travel the country giving speech recognition seminars. Nuance's products will help convert the court reporting industry's 60,000 positions from the stenotype method, invented in the late 1800s, to a state-of-the-art speech recognition-based occupation for the 21st Century. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has mandated provision of captioning services, and the brand new field of webcaptioning has just been born, both of which are perfect for speech recognition. Intersteno, a global organization of national reporting organizations, will host this year in Prague conferences that showcase speech recognition. Chinese, German, Italian and Japanese advances will also be discussed. Conversion of the court reporting and captioning industry has recently begun in Australia and India. Thank you, Nuance! Your technology is recreating an entire industry which was born thousands of years ago, and even enabling new lucrative careers across the world.” - Bettye K.

“I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 to prepare page/line indexes of deposition transcripts resulting from litigation of civil matters. These indexes are used by my attorney client at trial or arbitration to allow him to review deposition testimony without going through lengthy deposition transcripts. My billing had been set at 25 pages an hour. Since I started using Dragon, I have increased my productivity to over 30 pages an hour. This is a great improvement. Added benefit is less stress on the hands, back and neck.” - Dan W.