Product Description

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred Wireless 9 comes with the Plantronics CS60-USB wireless headset system. Is totally wireless. USB compatible so it's easy to connect up to your PC. Houses DECT technology (1.8GHz) that provides secure, high-quality audio. Has a range of 110 yards - up to 55 yards in a typical office. Provides up to 9 hours talk time. Has a fast battery recharge. You can wear with an ear-loop or over your head.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1261 in Software
• Brand: Nuance Communications, Inc.
• Released on: 2006-08-07
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows 2000
• Dimensions: 2.76" h x 5.12" w x 7.87" l, 2.25 pounds

Features

• Dragon Naturally Speaking A109X-WN4-9.0

Manufacturer's Description

Dragon NaturallySpeaking® Preferred enables small business and advanced PC users to create documents, spreadsheets and e-mail — all by speaking! Talk to your computer and your words instantly and accurately appear in Microsoft® Word and Excel®, Corel® WordPerfect® and virtually all Windows®-based applications. Listen to incoming e-mail and documents read aloud. Search the Web by speaking URLs and links. Use dictation shortcuts that enable you to insert blocks of texts or bitmaps — such as your name, title and signature — with a single voice command. Dictate directly into a PC or any ScanSoft-approved handheld digital recorder. A Plantronics® CS60-USB wireless headset is included and provides handsfree wireless freedom up to 100m from your desk. The sleek, modern headset is fully convertible and available in a choice of 2 wearing styles: 3 small and discreet ear-loops or a headband. Dont forget that this headset is universal and can be used wherever, whether it be listening to music or even having a crystal clear Skype conversation. Most people speak faster than 120 words per minute, but type fewer than 40 words a minute. That means you can create letters and e-mails about three times faster using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

More accurate than ever before - Achieve outstanding accuracy levels of up to 99%. Dragon NaturallySpeaking never makes a spelling mistake, and it actually gets smarter the more you use it!Easy to use - Simply install the Dragon NaturallySpeaking CD, and in just a few minutes, you’ll be dictating letters, e-mails and surfing the web by voice! We even include a free noise-cancelling microphone.Works with all of your favourite programs - Dictate, edit and control applications all by voice with programs like Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Outlook® Express, Microsoft® Excel®, Microsoft® Internet Explorer®, America Online® and Corel® WordPerfect®.Dragon products have won over 160 major awards worldwide for accuracy and ease of use. Mobile - Be productive on the go! Import recordings from any ScanSoft-certified handheld recorder for automatic transcription.

Software Highlights:Dragon NaturallySpeaking® 9 will make small business and advanced PC users more productive than ever before:

Unprecedented Speech Recognition Accuracy: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9’s improved speech engine is nearly 15% more accurate than Version 8.

No Training Required: Get started with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 without having to read any scripts or training text.

Expanded Support for New Applications. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 supports Firefox and Thunderbird from Mozilla.

New Tutorials simplify the training process, so you can be an expert Dragon NaturallySpeaking user right away.

Support for Non-standard Edit Controls means you get full Dragon functionally, such as “select and say” in more applications than ever before. New supported edit controls include Borland’s Tmemo, Tedit & TRichEdit controls, as well as TE Edit from SubSystems and TX Text from TX Text Control.

Select-And-Say Indicator. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 includes a new indicator that lets you know when you have “Select and Say” functionality available.

The Dragon NaturallySpeaking Command Browser is faster and easier to use than ever before.

Bluetooth Wireless Microphone Support With Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, you can use a Nuance-approved Bluetooth microphone as an input device, meaning you are no longer tethered to your PC.

Dictate Into More Handheld Devices Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 also supports handheld digital recorders and other PDAs that record in .wma and .mp3 format for deferred transcription.

Smart Formatting lets you specify how to format dates, measurements, acronyms or any word to meet your requirements.Add terms and contact names: Scan your documents, contact names and sent e-mails to update your vocabulary so you never have to spell a name again.

Dictate into your favourite programs: Dictate directly into virtually any Microsoft® Windows®-based application.

Navigate in AOL: Use built-in command-and-control commands to navigate more easily in AOL.

Navigate your desktop by voice: Launch or switch applications, save or print documents, and more, using menu commands for all standard Windows®-based applications.

Get started quickly: Teach the software to recognise your voice in as few as five minutes.

Eliminate “ums” and “ahs” from your dictation: The built-in Nothing But Speech (NBS)™ technology increases accuracy by filtering out inadvertent fillers and sounds between words.

Use spelling, numbers, commands only and dictation only modes: Increase your accuracy when completing specific tasks by voice by using optional spelling, numbers, commands only and dictation only modes.

Control the mouse by voice: Use multiple methods - including commands like “Move Mouse upper left” - to work handsfree.

Work on the Web by voice: Search the Web, access information and navigate Web pages by speaking URLs and links.

Make corrections in many ways: Select and correct a misrecognised word - using voice, mouse, or keyboard - without going into a correction window, and the software will learn from your correction

Give commands naturally: Built-in Natural Language Commands let you phrase commands in a variety of ways to get the response you want in many applications, including the DragonBar, DragonPad, Microsoft® Internet Explorer and America Online®

Find commands easily: The improved Command Browser enables you to search for commands by application and keyword.

Edit by voice: Use Select-and-Say® to make text changes by voice in many dialogs and applications.

Navigate in Microsoft® Outlook® Express: Use built-in command-and-control commands to navigate more easily in Microsoft® Outlook® Express.

Work in Microsoft® Word and Corel® WordPerfect®: Dictate, edit, and navigate more easily in Microsoft® Word and Corel® WordPerfect®.

Give commands naturally: Use additional built-in Natural Language Commands for Microsoft® Word and Corel® WordPerfect®.

Customer Reviews

walk and talk
It is one of my idiosyncrasies that I like to pace around as I dictate. Hence for me the wireless option was the perfect choice. The headset is one of the comfiest I have ever used and gives excellent recognition accuracy. As you would expect I am dictating this review using Dragon and was pleased to see that it recognized "idiosyncrasies" without any fuss. The software itself is superb and does seem to give noticeably better performance than version 8, which I also thought was pretty good. The only slight note of caution to sound is that it is fairly demanding in terms of its system requirements and needs as a minimum 1 GB of RAM and a 2 GHz processor. The only very slight disappointment was the version 9 has simply refused to accept my nine-year-old daughter's voice, whereas version 8 seems to be far more child friendly and has proved very successful for her.

In summary, I think this product is totally stunning both in terms of the recognition accuracy of the software and the sense of uncluttered wireless freedom that you get with this headset. I totally recommend it.

The future is here
About two weeks ago I was asked to write a book on certain aspects of gambling law which will require me, over the next three months, to write approximately 200,000 words. I'm quite a fast typer, but for the quotation of various passages from statute or other reference works it is always quite a slow process to copy type. I had toyed with speech recognition software in the past (reading about it but never quite having the nerve to try it out). The world seems to divide between people who raved about it and people who think that it's a waste of money. As you can probably guess, I am dictating this review having used the software now for approximately 1 week. Sometimes, it is true, that it can be frustrating. However I often find that the frustration is more about the lack of clarity in my own dictation then the computer's ability to understand what I have said. The software copes with a good deal of very technical terminology (I was in fits of giggles the other day after it correctly got reductio ad absurdum correct first time) and in terms of speed it copes very much better than a human would. The important point, I think, is that the software should not be treated as a total solution to ones typing needs. Formatting addresses and putting in technical citations and other fiddly bits will always take longer to dictate them to do by hand. It is also true but one has to do a different kind of proofreading because the type of errors which are thrown up often nonsensical words and there is a danger of looking "slapdash" in one's correspondence. However, as a lawyer working in a technical field, I expect a lot of in terms of vocabulary and grammatical accuracy. Dragon delivers, and at an exceptional price.

Just as a post script to this, I have recently discovered that it is better value to purchase one of the international language versions of the software. The reason is simple, the English version of the software contains for language variants (US English, Asian English, UK English etc) but the international versions include not only the relevant a foreign language (French, German, etc) but also ENGLISH AS WELL. Effectively, therefore, purchasing the French version gets you two languages for the price of one, which may be a useful hint for those who work in more than one language.

Superb word recognition dictation system.
I have been using voice recognition dictation systems for years. Initially I purchased the IBM voice recognition system nearly 10 years ago at a cost of £1000 for the programme. It worked reasonably well and over the years I have upgraded several times now to version 10.

Recently because of frustrations with IBM ViaVoice, with the niggling little problems, I purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 (Wireless edition) and I have to say it is quite superb. It is far and away better than the IBM system I have been using and seems to be intuitive in its recognition of your needs and dictation.

Like any new tool, you need to put in a little time for it to get used to you (it is intelligent working on algorithms) and for you to get used to the various commands it is programmed with.

You really can do all of the claimed options, including accessing and dictating into e-mails with ease.
What a shame I did not find out about this system before, it has already saved me time and given me quite a lot of pleasure.