Hi,
I have had a look at the other posts on the form with regards to Windows 11 and I'm still not sure what to do. This relates to my Dell laptop, which is not very old.

On Friday, my desktop was having components replaced by an engineer and therefore I spent the day working on my laptop. Was only really using Office 365 (Word and Outlook mostly), alongside other assistive technology and listening to a zoom webinar.

The fan noise is very excessive, I'm quite sensitive to noise as is a friend and future training client. It seems to be at its worst, when Dragon is being used alongside other technology. There is occasional noise without this using Windows defender scans, carrying out diagnostic checks and Windows 

The CPU and RAM usage when I check is only around 40%. There are no other memory hogs in use e.g. I know Microsoft teams takes a lot of RAM.

My friend is also using Windows 11, plus we will both need a Windows 11 additional laptop for a contract we are both working on.

I am already and admin user on my laptop and the laptop was replaced with a new model due to previous fan noise and there is little difference.  For me, I'm using a profile that I use on my desktop with the same Sennheiser PC chat eight binaural headset.

I'm using Dragon Professional Individual 15.60.2. , For some reason I'm getting an error upgrading my laptop specifications so here it is:

Microsoft Windows 11 pro

12th generation core I7-1260p, 2100 MHz, 12 cores, 16 logical processesers.

16GB RAM

Do you know whether this would be better with Dragon 16?

Is there a way that I control Dragon 16 before I buy it, so I don't commit to the effort and investment for the situation to be the same?

Is it worth trying Windows 7 compatibility mode for Dragon?

I wonder if there's anything I can do to make this an easy experience for my friend?

Many thanks for your support and time

Chris

 

 

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System Model XPS 9320

 

I don't think that this is a software issue, as otherwise I would encounter it, too.

Have a look at this:


Does your Dell make too much fan noise or run hot and slow? Here's the answer! - YouTube

 

 

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The New Game in Town: DragonConnect

Chris,

 

If CPU usage is around 40% then that is very high!

 

What is the CPU load if Dragon is not running?

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I would say half that 

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System Model XPS 9320

 

I think RW hit the nail on the head. The only reason a computer spins the fans faster is if the CPU and other components get too hot. This can happen for a variety of reasons - blocked airflow if laptops are on cushions, or if air can't get in under the sides or back or front of laptops on tables, or if you're doing a lot of Zoom calls (ie, lots of graphics GPU computing; my bosses' laptop overheated all the time), or trying to compute with the normal CPU at the same time. Or, as RW's linked video points out, it could be because of worn-out thermal paste on the CPU or just plain noisy fan bearings.

The cooling technology and airflow dynamics inside a laptop are surprisingly complex - routing of airflow, volume, getting the air past the right components, and so on.

Perhaps you could get one of those laptop cooling trays that helps to draw heat away from your laptop. Or try to minimize the CPU/GPU load on your machine, but you've probably already tried that.

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Win10/11/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/3950X, 64/128GB RAM, Dragon 15.3, SP 7 Standard, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Amazon YUWAKAYI headset, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, excellent Sareville Wireless Mono Headset, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and Logitech G502 awesome gaming mouse.

Thanks, any suggestions for a cooing tray? I was using laptop on a stand by the window and good air flow.

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System Model XPS 9320

 

I had similar problems with a laptop that was fixed by disabling all software and drivers installed by the vendor. It wasn't a dell, but having owned those, I would suspect that could be the issue. I used the task manager to see the processes hogging CPU and killed them. Some of them were unkillable, but uninstalling the software packages  fixed the problem.

Thanks for the responses, much appreciated. This device is actually a brand new one within about 9 months. It might be the paste I guess, have to ask dell to send an engineer again.

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System Model XPS 9320

 

Your CPU usage sounds high. The suggestion to use the task manager to see what processes are using so much CPU is a good idea. When I purchased my desktop Dell computer in 2019 I was surprised to find that it's several fans were frequently running. It turned out that Nvidia container was using about 20% of the CPU all the time. The machine ran fine, everything was appropriately speedy, but it didn't make sense for Nvidia to hog 20% of the CPU right from the very start. I tried updating the graphics driver but that didn't help. A Dell technician spoke to one at Nvidia and found that there was a new driver that was not yet out on the Internet. He applied that, and the high CPU usage went away. If a particular process is using a lot of CPU you could ask a Dell technician what is going on. Whatever is the cause, you want to get it fixed before your warranty expires - especially if the problem is something like the paste which would require taking the laptop apart.

I don't worry about the amount of memory used because I think Windows grabs a considerable amount of whatever is available. My surface Pro has 16 GB of memory and typically about 40% of memory is reported by the task manager as in use.

As regards Windows 11 I have been using first Dragon 15.3 and now version 16 on a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 computer and experienced no problems related to Dragon. I don't know if the surface Pro even has any fans and think it just depends upon heat dissipating without them. It doesn't produce much heat at all. When I speak my CPU usage may briefly go up to about 40% but then afterwards drops down to about 3%.

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GaryN

Hi there,
ironically, I had just been replying in Google Chrome to Dell technical support saying that the fan was not that noisy and then suddenly it was very noisy. I'm not quite sure how to paste the screenshot of the task manager nor attach a file, I was mostly using Google chrome with some pages open and whilst Windows defender was completing an antivirus scan. Scarily, the RAM usage is at 78%. I can't work out what's using the RAM, as there is no NVIDA in use nor is there anything particularly in the task manager. It could be chrome however because I know that is also a memory hog. There is no teams open, which again I know to be quite RAM intensive. So confused..

Read and Write opening caused a black screen and nothing would happen after shutting down and waiting 30 seconds.

Would it be worth trying the quiet mode fan option or would the performance be rubbish ?

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System Model XPS 9320

 

I have also had problems with excessively loud laptop PC cooling fans. I ended up giving that loud Dell Computer to my daughter, and replacing it with a quiet computer[*].


Ideally you will be able to remedy any hardware problems that have caused your PC to suddenly start running louder. Or perhaps unfortunately it may be hardware degradation.


I got a lot of benefit from laptop stands that lift the bottom of the laptop off the desk surface, Improving airflow.


I shopped for but did not purchase an active CPU cooler.


It is also possible that software updates, e.g. to the operating system, may have caused your PC suddenly start running louder. This is not unknown.


While I was fighting with my excessively loud laptop, I did find some software tweaks That helped a bit, although not enough to allow me to keep the Dell. Unfortunately my notes on this experience are in Microsoft OneNote, and OneNote has absolutely horrible search. googling afresh finds SpeedFan, which I did use, as well as registry settings to disable Turbo mode and limit the highest non-Turbo clock frequency. IIRC I got some Benefit from leaving the fan on all time while limiting the CPU frequency - I think the power/fan management hysteresis was not well tuned, so it would be running fan low or off at low frequency, ramp up frequency/Turbo, get hot and turn into hyper fan mode, but never cool down again enough to lower the fans again.


Software control example: https://www.lifewire.com/control-cpu-fan-windows-11-5197398 describes some of the approaches to controlling fan speed, and the example appears to apply to a Dell XPS 13. It was not however applicable to my old Dell. amongst others it shows how MSI Afterburner provides a very nice response curve that allows the user to control %fan speed as a function of temperature. As I mentioned above, it is perhaps nonintuitive that usually one wants to let the fan run earlier, although perhaps not 100%. Experiment and see if the noise level changes dramatically with fan speed.


Unfortunately power, temperature, and fan management is very inconsistent. Microsoft power options is almost never good enough. Different BIOSes provide different abilities. different PC vendors may provide different standard software. Note: gaming oriented desktop and laptop PCs with system overclocking control often have the best such control, although they also tend to be loud. SpeedFan is only one of several generic control programs. Finally, CPU vendors like Intel often tend to ignore software directives with respect CPU speed, arrogantly believing that their power management algorithms are better than anybody else's. Fortunately the CPU vendor usually cannot control the PC case fans directly.


---


Note *: I replaced my loud Dell with a quieter Microsoft Surface Book 3, although I would not recommend any Surface Book to anyone else because of the stupid and fragile hinge.

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DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

There's no getting around the fact that mechanical fans are noisy, whether from the electric motor, or the propwash created by the fan blades. The HP desktop OMEN unit that i purchased four years ago is liquid cooled, which is efficient, and very quiet. From the standpoint of thermodynamics, a liquid cooled heat transfer system is vastly more efficient than an air cooled system, if for no other reason than the density of the heat transfer mechanism. If you're in the market for new computer and it does not have to be a notebook, a liquid cooled system is clearly preferable. Heatsinks are only as effective as the differential in heat absorption from the heatsink material itself, and the energy source from which the heat emanates. Entropy decrees that the differential gap will narrow until the heat source and the heatsink temperatures will average out together. That makes for a very hot heatsink. Liquid cooling, combined with a low speed fan to cool the liquid itself would seem to be optimal.

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Art Silen

'Question assumptions… Ask better questions… Think stochastically'

DSN 15 .3, running on Win10 Intel Core i7 – 8700 K CPU@3.70 GHz, with 16 GB of RAM and KnowBrainer 2017

Our main monster gaming computer (not to mention all servers), never use liquid cooling because it will eventually evaporate or fail. Liquid cooling is much quieter but it's a risky gimmick. We asked M-Tech computer manufacturers the same question. They won't touch liquid cooling. The faster the computer, the more fans and noise. We have 3 giant “supposedly silent” fans with a pile of helper fans. Our computer cabinet also includes extra silent padding but it still sounds like 3 24 inch whole house fans turned up to annihilation mode. For comfort reasons, we all use SpeechWare 6-in-1s, from a distance of about 14 inches. My personal TableMike sits on top of the monster tower and works beautifully

The Achilles' heel of any TableMike is noise so if this works for us, you should have a lot of good headset choices. Unfortunately, a lot of cheap headsets have absolutely no noise filtering, irregardless of what the manufacturer claims. If your noise levels are excessive, nothing can handle it better than the Shokz OpenComm UC Bone Conduction Bluetooth headset. As accurate as our TableMikes are, they can't handle anything above low background music while the OpenComm UC can handle music, with no open doors or Windows, so loud that our nearest neighbor (more than 1/4 of a mile away through the woods) would probably call five-o. It's really not our fault they don't like the Big Haired Lady's sing-along rendition of Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf. 

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BTW: laptop stands

 

Solid wood or plastic laptop stands are not good.  At least not if there is an unbroken surface that a laptop rests upon. Insulators.   This also applies to  many airplane seat trays. I have had my laptop overheat on long flights,  enough that I  like to carry a folding laptop stand on the plane.

 

If the  wood or plastic  laptop stand has a lot of holes or gaps, maybe.

 

But ...  for a while I use the Amazon basics metal mesh laptop stand. But even this was suboptimal  or cooling, unless I put my laptop into tent mode so that there was no laptop surface on the mesh,  just the edges of the screen and keyboard.

 

I have had pretty good luck with 

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BCST24T/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Description: Laptop Stand, Ergonomic Aluminum Adjustable Metal Stand,Computer Foldable X-Stand Cooling Pad Compatible with MacBook Air Pro, iPad, Dell XPS, HP More 7-17” Laptops

 

Basically,  4 aluminum legs connected like an X,  2 of the legs telescoping,  all folding compact -  nice for travel

 

Unfortunately no longer for sale

 

My fallback  laptop stands are  rubber/plastic wedges   that I use in the back edge, under the screen and clamshell mode. I often use the same or slightly smaller wedges at the front edge to stop the laptop sliding. 

 

Unfortunately,  the rubber/plastic wedges take up too much space to be used on an airplane seat tray.   I mostly use the rubber/plastic wedges on desktop setups.  The  telescoping  foldable X-stand doesn't fit  On a plane seat tray either, but the front legs work OK hanging over the seat tray edge, and hold the laptop in place.

 

Unfortunately, nothing really works to allow my laptop clamshell display to be properly inclined.   I have actually had a laptop display get caught when the seat ahead of me was reclined.  perhaps it would be better in first-class ... but that's not likely to happen for me.

 

Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to use speech recognition on a plane.

 

I can do some things with my convertible 2-in-1 laptop mode in tablet mode.  But not what I really want to do if I'm flying from the West Coast to Europe.

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DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

Thanks for your further response, much appreciated. I found a Dell performance tab, intermittently solving the issue with the other software and the fan is a lot quieter. I was looking for laptops that are known to be quiet and then came across cooling stands. For £21, I may actually invest in a cooling stand anyway. I did invest in a laptop stand, to improve airflow and enable me to work economically when I do use the laptop. It's interesting about your surface book, as my husband has a fairly recent model that is even noisier than my Dell!

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System Model XPS 9320

 

Um, as regards fan noise for the surface Pro 8, the reason I have no fan noise is probably because I use the laptop for dictating material for a book rather than for something like games. Have never heard the fan at all, and the laptop when touched in the back only feels slightly warm. Reviews of the model have stated that the fan can become quite loud when doing things like playing games. Yesterday out of curiosity I tried watching some video, but they laptop did not heat up enough for the fan to activate.

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GaryN

 

Please share the Dell performance tab settings you used.  I'm sure that I will need them again in the future, as probably will some other people.

 

Similarly, I look forward to hearing your reports of cooling stands or pads  for laptops. I was very interested in them, but there were just too many choices and contradictory reviews.

 

 

I think the biggest trouble with my old Dell was not the noise level, but that it  the noise level would be fairly often changing.

 

No, wait, now I remember: my old loud Dell was actually a custom build,  with 64G of RAM  for a machine that usually only came with 16 or at most 32 gig of RAM. The RAM helped some of my more challenging applications run better, but I think the extra RAM may have made it run hotter.  And the Dell power management algorithms were probably not tuned for the extra DRAM.

 

 

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DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

The setting am currently using in the Dell performance app is the quiet option, which may reduce performance. It seemed the same however as before I changed it except without the fan noise.

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System Model XPS 9320

 

So, the issue appears to be okay at the moment having selected the different performance modes to make a fan quiet. The cooling stand attived today, which I am yet to try.
However, the issue with Texthelp Read and Write Gold is being blamed on Dragon. The engineer is saying that it possibly because Dragon and the software attempting to access the same files at the same time. I use the software in exactly the same way on my desktop without issue, as do many others that I have trained and coached et cetera. Any ideas please?

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System Model XPS 9320

 

Screaming! I was using my laptop on battery today. Dragon is very slow to respond to wake up (this has always been so) and would not switch on from sleep mode. The cursor was also jumping about in Word...

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System Model XPS 9320

 

Nuance fixed the Jumping Cursor/Jumping Page problem with Microsoft Word and Outlook in the Dragon Professional 16 Upgrade. However, we had fairly good luck opening the DragonBar Options/Commands/More Commands (button) and removing the checkmark Enable Natural Language Commands. This doesn't need to be done in Ver. 16

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That's what I thought, I'm on 15.6 and will disable natural language commands. Just disabled the webcam mic.

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System Model XPS 9320

 

Hey folks, can't seem to find a post that I thought I made...
I am using Dragon 15.61 Individual to write emails in Office 365 online and in Google Chrome.
At random, extra letters are added to words having been ok.
Seems like the web extension is not doing well, as often is fixed by rebooting. Dragon also sometimes will stop working in Outlook 365 Web and is fine in the Outlook desktop app.
Did I read somewhere here that I might have better luck in Edge?

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System Model XPS 9320

 

We avoid Microsoft 365 web because it's not Dragon friendly. You can tell by the AWOL DragonBar missing green • that appears in your local Outlook installation. The reason why you are experiencing double letters in Outlook web is because Dragon buffers your dictation until you stop speaking or take a breath. Dragon then drops all of your dictation simultaneously, similar to a paste but if your connection isn't fast enough or Dragon has become a bit lethargic, you will see double lettering and/or missing letters.  The obvious solution is for Dragon to drop one letter at a time, equivalent to extremely fast typing, into non-Dragon friendly environments. In our opinion, this was a, pardon the pun, KnowBrainer. Unfortunately, Nuance refused to implement this mission-critical feature. With that in mind, Rüdiger created DragonCapture which does just that. You'll find a 30 day trial in our signature tag

PS: Because Dragon works correctly after you close and re-launch, we suspect your user profile is partially corrupted. You might want to check out our Dragon Installation/Training Guide (complimentary to our Dragon customers) which includes details on the installation process, a list of Dragon commands organized by category and pictorial details on fixing three dozen sandtraps. 

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Thank you Lunis. Not even the IT manager can understand that you can use email in Outlook and the company are paranoid about it ! As I have reinstalled Dragon, does that mean exporting commands and vocab and setting up a new profile?

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System Model XPS 9320

 

The Outlook local installation is about the only email utility that is Dragon friendly. Outlook is 1 of the primary applications included in Microsoft 365 (formally Office 365). Your IT manager knows exactly what Outlook is and most likely aware that it comes in 2 flavors; web and local installations. The local installation of Microsoft Outlook is already approved by 99.9% of the free world so that shouldn't be an issue.

Reinstalling Dragon is almost never necessary. 98% of Dragon problems have something to do with a setting option or user profile corruption. Fortunately, Nuance anticipated that most Dragon end-users would reinstall Dragon when something goes wrong. This is a normal reaction which we also do (only with other applications) but it usually isn't an effective solution. This is usually a waste of time but it never hurts anything either.

We recommend exporting your current vocabulary & commands, creating a new user profile and reversing the previous process. Our training guide pictorially details this procedure but you probably don't need it for this chore alone.

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Thanks Lunis. I realise my explanation was not clear. I am an associate for a well known company that supports disabled people in the workplace. I was refused a request to use their email account in the Outlook desktop app; the response was that this was less secure than webmail.

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System Model XPS 9320

 

This is a common attitude. Unfortunately, it's probably true. 

 

Moreover, many companies just plain don't want to allow any Microsoft software. Neither Microsoft Exchange nor Outlook nor  any of the rest of  Microsoft Office. Particularly high-tech, start ups, and just plain anybody who wants to avoid paying Microsoft license fees.

 

 

Q:  what sort of webmail are they forcing you to use?

 

OWA (Outlook Web Access)? 

• I.e.  your company has a Microsoft Exchange server, and they just don't want you to use Outlook on the desktop? 
• That's unlikely.   If IT uses Microsoft Exchange servers  they probably are willing to deal with Outlook. More likely ...

 

 

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DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

Thanks Ag. They've migrated (which was a disaster) from Gmail yo office 365.  Employees can use the local Outlook app ( I was one for a maternity cover) but freelancers are to only use the Outlook webmail access. I demonstrated lack of functionality,  especially Web commands and was declined to use the local app. Even with disabilities myself.

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System Model XPS 9320