Whether you’re installing NaturallySpeaking for the first time or installing over a previous version, the process is easy. If you have user profiles from NaturallySpeaking version 10 or 11, the Upgrade Wizard finds those user profiles and sets them up in version 12. Otherwise you’re guided through the creation of a new user profile. Follow these steps:
Learn tips and tricks for using Dragon speech recognition on the PC or Mac to quickly compose emails, draft and edit documents, control your computer, and more. Nuance University Online Training Course for PC; Top 5 frequently asked questions. Dragon for PC. Dragon Software - Speech to Text Dragon Professional Individual 15 is the most accurate, sophisticated and powerful speech recognition software in the world. Dragon N aturallySpeaking 15 uses Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence to generate the text almost as quickly as you can speak. Simply speak into a microphone and the words will.
1Find the envelope that contains the installation DVD.
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Home speech recognition software lets you get more done every day on your computer - quickly and accurately - using your voice.
- Jun 16, 2016 I highlight in some detail in “The Writer’s Guide to Training Your Dragon” how Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows is, in many ways, a far superior product to the product formerly known as Dragon Dictate (now simply called Dragon for Mac). I stand by that opinion still, despite currently dictating this blog post using Dragon for Mac 5.
- Dragon for Mac is powered by the latest version of the Dragon speech recognition engine, and was built from the ground up for Mac OS. It works with your favorite Mac applications, and makes it easy to find online content, create reports, email, research notes, articles, and more, just by using your voice – up to three times faster than typing.
- Naturally Speaking Standard UK English Edition 4.0. By Dragon Systems. CD-ROM More Buying Choices $20.00 (2 used & new offers) Dragon for MAC Medical 5.0, Bluetooth (Discontinued) by Nuance Dragon. 2.0 out of 5 stars 2. CD-ROM Currently unavailable. Naturally Speaking Preferred.
- How to dictate to your Macintosh with good accuracy How to buy Macspeech Dictate in Australia Dragon for Mac: A Review of Dragon v5 Dragon for Mac Features How to stop Dragon for Mac 6 from crashing 86 Responses to “Dragon Naturally Speaking arrives on the Macintosh!”.
The DVD in the white envelope has a label with a serial number on it. The serial number enables you to activate the program, so keep it handy. You’ll see duplicates of the number in a peel-off label format for your convenience.
2Paste the duplicate serial numbers in places that you can easily access.
For safekeeping, peel two of them off (leaving one on the envelope) and put them on your software receipt or in a file folder where you’ll be able to find them again.
3Plug in the microphone.
Microphones other than those with a USB (including the headset microphones that come with NaturallySpeaking editions) plug into your computer’s sound card. If you have a desktop computer, turn the computer so that you can see the back where all the cables are.
Because many people feel this way, Nuance has thoughtfully provided a user guide for the headset included with the software. Look at the the operating guide. Your computer likely has color-coded jacks for the microphone and the headset. The headset has two color-coded plugs that correspond to the ones on the headset. Insert the plugs into the jacks as shown in the photo they supply.
4Put the installation DVD into your DVD drive.
The Windows AutoRun feature starts running the installation program automatically.
If you wait 30 seconds or so and nothing happens, don’t worry. Nothing is wrong. Do this instead: Double-click the Computer icon on the Windows desktop. When the Computer window opens, find the icon corresponding to your DVD-ROM drive, and double-click it. Find the setup.exe file in the DVD-ROM window and double-click it. Now you are exactly where you would be if it had started automatically.
5Click Next.
The InstallShield Wizard starts. The End User License Agreement appears.
6Select the radio button that says “I accept the terms in the license agreement” if you agree, and then click Next in the License Agreement window.
You are presented with the customer information window.
7Type in your username and serial number where prompted and click Next.
The serial number will never have any letter Os in it. If you see something that looks like an O, it’s always a zero.
8Choose which components of Dragon NaturallySpeaking to install.
The screen displays two radio button choices, Typical/Complete or Custom.
Unless you are an advanced user, select Typical/Complete.
Also on that screen you see the capability to change the location of the files. The wizard suggests C:/ProgramFiles/Nuance/NaturallySpeaking12, which is the logical choice. If you agree, do nothing. If you’d like to choose a different folder, click the Change button. A Change Current Destination Folder window appears. Select the folder you want. After you select the folder you want, click the OK button in the Choose Directory window.
9Click Next.
A Ready to Install the Program window appears; its purpose is to make sure you didn’t make a mistake on the choices you made. You can click Back to return to the preceding screen and change the choices you made there.
10Click Install.
The files are copied to your hard drive. This may take several minutes. When all the files are copied, a screen appears, and you’re asked to choose a way to register the software.
11Select one of the three radio buttons to register.
You can choose Register Online, Print Registration Form, or Remind Me in 7 Days. Make your choice based on your needs. Deselect the check box if you don’t want to look for updates.
12Click OK.
A screen informs you that the wizard has completed installing your files. A check box that’s automatically selected looks for program updates when the setup is complete.
13Click Finish.
After a pause, a screen pops up prompting you to activate the software. You can either activate it now or within five more uses. Activation is required to use the program after the fifth use.
You’re presented with two options, “Activate Now,” or “Activate later.” If you click “Activate Now” you must be connected to the web. This is done to verify that you are using a valid serial number. No personal information is sent. If you don’t choose to activate now, you will be prompted the next five times you use the software.
14Click the Activate Now button.
If you checked your system requirements before you installed the program, it’s unlikely that you will get an alert screen. But if you do, this screen alerts you that you don’t have enough computer resources (probably RAM) to run some of the external programs listed with Natural Language commands and that performance will be slower.
If you see this screen, go to the Dragon Help menu in the upper-right corner and choose Performance Assistant to help you increase your speed and change options.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is available for PC and Macs. Which version is better?
I realize that this article is going to be a moot point for a lot of people. You’re either a Mac person or a PC person, and you’re naturally going to gravitate towards the version of the software designed for your computer, right?
Not necessarily. It turns out when it comes to deciding between the PC and the Mac version of Dragon Naturally Speaking there are several different options available to you depending on what kind of performance you demand. This is also a subject that’s been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve been switching my writing workflow to 100% dictation and I try to figure out a decent way of getting text from my recorder to a word processor.
The problem is pretty simple. I made the switch to Mac about a year ago and I love it. This is coming from a lifelong PC user who grew up on the things. Seriously, my first PC was a monochrome 8086 IBM compatible that my dad spent thousands of 1980s dollars to buy. The only problem with that switch is I still like to use Dragon occasionally, and Dragon for Mac sucks.
Training Your Dragon
Training: This is by far the best reason to get Dragon for PC. If it gets a word wrong then you can correct it and Dragon learns from that correction. If it repeatedly gets a word wrong then you can train it on that word and the problem goes away.
Seriously. I can’t tell you how much of a lifesaver this feature is. I’ve taught my Dragon how to swear. I’ve had it learn specialized vocabulary for fantasy and science fiction stories I was working on. It’s a game changer, a productivity saver, and something that you absolutely need in my opinion.
Dragon for Mac? Not so much. You just can’t train it the same way you can the PC version. I’m not sure what’s going on under the hood that they weren’t able to include the central feature of every PC version of this program going back to its inception, but it was a really boneheaded move. Dragon for Mac is basically a nice way to get your words on screen, but you’ll constantly be correcting the same transcription errors and It. Gets. Old.
Transcription
Transcription is a mixed back between PC and Mac, but it’s a mixed bag that I think leans towards the Windows version even though there is a minor annoyance about the Windows version.
Transcription is how I use Dragon. I have a Philips recorder that I carry with me at all times so that I can utilize my downtime. If I’m on a drive then I’m dictating. If I’m in the parking lot waiting on my wife to do some shopping I can pull out the recorder and dictate. It’s a great tool for getting out a first draft and putting thoughts on the page, and because of that transcription is the thing I focus on the most when I’m setting up Dragon.
The nice thing about transcription in Dragon for Mac is that I can load up multiple files at once and tell Dragon to transcribe them, and then they’re transcribed in the background leaving me free to do other things. Compare this to the PC version of Dragon where you can transcribe multiple files at once by selecting them, sure, but the drawback is Dragon takes control of your PC while it’s doing the transcribing rather than doing that transcription in the background.
So it’s a game of tradeoffs. Dragon for Mac does the transcribing in the background, but remember that training I was talking about in my first point? Yeah, you really can’t do that with transcription. In Dragon for PC you create a separate input for your digital recorder under your existing profile and then you can train that input source as it makes mistakes and it will get better and learn how you talk.
Dragon for Mac? Not so much. It does transcription, sure, but it’s the same old problem where it’s going to keep making the same mistakes over and over again because you can’t train it so it never learns. The end result is you’re going to be spending a hell of a lot of time going back and fixing the same mistakes over and over again and believe you me that gets very old very fast.
So for transcription the tip of the hat goes to Dragon for PC.
Accuracy and the Little Things
Finally there’s accuracy to think of. How good are these programs out of the box?
I can remember a time in the late ’90s and early ’00s when you had to spend a lot of time training Dragon if you wanted anything approaching accuracy, and even then you still had to go over everything you wrote with an editor’s eye to make sure it was coming out correct. This was fine for my dad because he was a lawyer and lawyers employ secretaries to do dictation anyway. Dragon just made life easier for everyone involved.
But what about for an author who doesn’t have a secretary to go over everything? And that’s the rub of it. I’ve discovered that no matter what you do, no matter what version of Dragon comes out, there’s nothing that’s going to be one hundred percent accurate whether you’re talking about transcription or dictating to the computer. There’s always going to be little mistakes that creep in, and you’re always going to have to keep an eye out for those mistakes.
Dragon Speaks For Mac Torrent
I’ve not done anything approaching a scientific study of this, but I have a general feel between using Dragon for PC and Dragon for Mac, and I’d say that for sitting down and dictating or for transcribing the accuracy is definitely better on the PC version out of the box. And since you can’t really do any training worth the name in Dragon for Mac it’s not like it’s going to get better, whereas in the PC version you can train and it’s going to do a better job of learning your unique style.
Dragon for Mac also has odd idiosyncrasies. The transcription sucks, as I mentioned, but it also capitalizes words randomly and inserts random spaces. There are a lot of little niggling details it gets wrong that adds up to a very frustrating experience for a piece of software that costs so much.
Which version of Dragon should you get?
This is simple. If you have a PC then you need to get Dragon for PC. If you have a Mac? You still want to get Dragon for PC.
Stay with me for a moment here, because this is the solution I ultimately came up with since Dragon for PC is the one piece of software that I found myself missing when I made the switch to Mac.
Dragon Speaks For Mac
Dragon for Mac costs $300. That’s a steep pricetag for a piece of software that’s essentially a less functional version of its PC counterpart. This is one piece of software where you’re definitely paying the Mac tax.
But don’t forget about Parallels.
The wonderful thing about today’s Macs is they’re fully capable of running a modern Windows OS, and it’s never been easier to run a virtual machine like Parallels that allows you to run a Windows install within whatever version of MacOs you’re running. Which means you get all the benefits of the one or two Windows programs you need to run while also retaining all your Mac stuff.
The cost makes sense too. Dragon Premium 13 costs roughly $120. Parallels costs $80 to either buy outright or to get a one year SAAS subscription that includes updates. That means you’re only out $200 to get Dragon working on your Mac, which is still $100 cheaper than buying Dragon for Mac outright! You don’t even have to worry about Windows, because Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 right now. The only penalty for not paying for Windows 10 is you get some annoying text in the bottom right corner of your screen and you can’t personalize the background, but why would you want to do that when you’re doing most of your computing on your Mac?
There are two potential drawbacks to this approach:
- There is a learning curve to figuring out how to run Parallels on your Mac. I didn’t think it was a particularly steep learning curve, but it’s definitely there. Thankfully there are a number of tutorials out there that will get you up and running, and you can even do a 15 day free trial to see if it works for you.
- You have to have a computer that has some resources to it. You’re running two OSes at the same time including Dragon which can be resource intensive. I’m running a higher end MacBook Pro of recent vintage so I didn’t have any problem, but if you’re running older hardware you might have an issue. Then again if you’re running hardware old enough for this to be an issue then you’re also probably running hardware old enough that Dragon for Mac isn’t a terribly viable option either.
In a nutshell
Dragon Speaks For Macbook Pro
So there you have it. Avoid Dragon for Mac. Get Dragon Premium 13 for PC. If you’re using a Mac then you need to either run Dragon for PC in Parallels or install Windows on your system using Bootcamp and use Dragon for PC if you’re serious about voice recognition as part of your writing workflow.
Nuance Dragon Mac
That’s it for this update. Up next: Why Dragon isn’t the magic productivity silver bullet some people make it out to be, and why it can still be damn useful.