Prior to purchasing Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 14, I borrowed a copy of Version 12 from a friend and was absolutely delighted with it!

I have never been truly satisfied with my copy of Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 14.

Should I spend $250 to upgrade to Version 15 or go back to using my friend's copy of Version 12?

Thanks!

Joe

 

 

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gfr92y

If your friend's Version 12 works, you might as well stick with it. But Version 12 may not be compatible with the programs you want to run. Version 12 was released almost 10 years ago.

Version 14 was a bit of a disappointment. I thought of it as "Version 13.00001." I skipped the upgrade. Version 15 is better.

 

Alan,

Thanks for your prompt reply and feedback!

I just want to make sure I do not read more into your reply than you intended to say...

Are you saying that "upgrading" from Version 12, with which I have a good track record, to Version 15 is not necessarily a good use of $250?

If that is what your saying, I will probably buy myself a new microphone and dedicate it to you.

Thanks, again.

Joe

 

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gfr92y

Hi Joe,

This is not an easy call. Version 12 is very out-of-date. It probably won't integrate well into programs designed for Windows 10 and 11.

But if Version 12 does what you need it to do, and you don't notice incompatibilities, I would say you will get a bigger bang-for-your-buck by investing in a good microphone than by paying for the upgrade.

There's no doubt Version 15 is more accurate than previous versions. It also gives better results with less-than-stellar microphones, and is more usable by people who have speech difficulties. If your accuracy with Version 12 is 95%, you might squeeze another percentage point or two with Version 15. That's a noticeable improvement, but it may not be significant. It depends on how much you use Dragon. If you use it for an hour per day, the difference won't be as pronounced as it would be if you use Dragon for six hours a day.

The best way to improve Dragon's accuracy is to improve one's dictation habits: positioning the microphone properly, minimizing background sounds, speaking with confidence, speaking clearly and distinctly, dictating long phrases, etc. Newer versions of Dragon are good to have, but won't make much of a difference if you, for example, dictate short, choppy phrases or have music playing in the background.

Thanks for the additional information!

I tend to overthink my sentences and dictate in short, choppy phrases. I never to work on that!

Thanks, again.

Joe



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gfr92y

I'm not sure if $250 will be worth it for you (I upgraded from DPI 14 to 15 for $99 years ago) but I did notice right away that DPI 15 was much more responsive than DPI 14. Generally more stable as well.

 

Just my 2 bits....

 

By the way, if I am not mistaken the Open Ended command structure was not yet supported in version 12 as well.

 

Investing in a good microphone is always a good idea. But it need not be very expensive. A couple of months ago I purchased a €10 USB microphone at the local Dutch "five-and-dime". Turns out it's the best microphone I ever had.

 

But that's probably because DPI 15 gets the best out of any microphone :-).

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https://speechproductivity.eu

Turbocharge your Dragon® productivity with 40 Power Addons

Nuance stopped offering upgrades several months ago. The price is now $500 for a full copy and that is the only choice

 

Open Ended command capability was introduced in Ver. 13.

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Strange! I just came across this on the Nuance website...

 

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gfr92y

This is an accident on Nuances part. It is not unusual for Nuance marketing to drop the ball. They didn't intend for this add to be viewable. As further evidence, that PowerMic III add-on is no longer available. Nuance is out of stock and replaced this model with the PowerMic 4

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