Review by Colorgirl

(NOTE- This review includes important information about difficulties installing this program which I consider VERY important. For this reason, I am posting this review as a work in progress. I intend to update it as my experiences continue as a person who has NOT used Dragon before on my PC. )nnMy daughter has dyslexia and as a result has a hard time with writing papers. Upon the recommendation of others with dyslexia, she decided to try using Dragon to see if it might help her write and get her ideas down on paper more quickly. She has Dragon 12.5 which she has attempted to use for three months or so. She is using Dragon on her machine which is an XP machine. My daughter has had some difficulty trying to get Dragon to train to her speech patterns and attributed it to her braces which sometimes make it difficult for her to talk.

I decided to try to get Dragon for my computer which is a Windows 7 64 bit computer and see if I might learn to use it alongside her to help her train and use this program which I am sure will help her. My experience, however, was MUCH more frustrating than hers.

MY COMPUTERnOS- Windows 7 64 bitnProcessor i5 650 @ 3.20 GhznRAM- 6.0 GBnVideo- ATI Radeon HD 5700 SeriesnMonitor -Viewsonic VX 2270nnINSTALLATION ALMOST IMPOSSIBLEnI am pretty computer savvy and the installation of the Dragon Premium 13.0 was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had in installing programs into my computer. I tried everything I could think of to install. I got the same experience:nnI would put the program into the machine, go through the installation process, add the serial number and continue installation. The program would look like it was installing, but then would stop and insist that the program installation was interrupted and I should try to set it up again at a later time.

I tried to install this every which way I could think of including safe mode, and going into the disc files and using them directly. NOTHING worked. Same results.

MY CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCEnFIRST TECHNICIANnAfter reading such horror stories about Nuance customer service, I was not looking forward to having to call them for help. I did manage to get through after a long wait on hold, and I talked to my first technician. I was told that I should copy the entire DVD into my desktop and install it there. The technician was so sure that this would work that they told me to call back if I had any trouble. The technician was very polite and positive, but I was a bit frustrated that they left me on my own at that point. True to my suspicion, the program did not install any easier this time than it did before . At this point, I had spent four hours trying to get this program to install.

SECOND TECHNICIANnI called back, and this time I got a technician who really knew computers even better than the first one. Again a very pleasant and helpful attitude, but at times difficult to understand due to international phone connection and accent. He knew how to get in and out of files and locations well and was pretty good at relating this to me. Had I been a person who did not know how to program computers, however, this could have led to some intense frustration.

The second technician listened to everything that I had done so far and paid attention. He put me on hold to do some research and came back after a considerable amount of time. I was told that I needed to write down every single file that this person told me I would need to make a note of. This impressed me greatly as that is key when making this kind of change to the files in the system.

I wrote down the Windows 7 update files that would need to be uninstalled : KB 2918614, KB 2982791, KB 2970228. These were the only files that pertained to my system. The technician carefully walked me through the uninstall process, again, I was impressed by his knowledge and way in which he carefully had me document the entire process. As a computer technician, I know that it is important to keep careful track of all changes made to the system.

I also was led through my msconfig files and disabled all startup and services (once I made Windows files hidden first) and again carefully noted all that I had done on paper. Once I did this, I immediately (without rebooting) installed the Dragon program. It did not seem like it wanted to install and took almost ten minutes to perform some loops of processing. Eventually it did install and there were no problems at all with the installation other than very slow processing.

The process of re-activating the startup and services files took a bit more time and then the computer had to be restarted to get the Windows 7 update files to re-install as well. Again this took several more HOURS to complete, so the installation process for Dragon 13.0 Premium literally took me ALL DAY to install.

ONE DAY LATERnI was exhausted from the intricate process and all of the effort I had to go through to install that I decided to try to use the program the next day. That was easier said than done. In order to truly use the product efficiently, I had to read the manual. The only way I really could use the program easily was to print out the huge manual. That led to problems because once again, my printer would not print out the program. It kept choking on the files and would hang. Four hours later, I managed to re-install the driver to my HP K550 Officejet printer and get the manual to print. I have never had a problem with my printer not printing a large file like this before.

This process was getting more frustrating by the moment. I began to try to train the program to my voice but have been confused as to how this works, since I did not have the program before this. The interface is so simplistic, I had no idea where to go. I did not want to ask my daughter yet as I wanted to review this as a first time user.

Let me tell you, if I did not know how to build and program computers, I probably would have given up with this and not used it. However, I really wanted to so I have kept on.

USING THE PROGRAMnI have started reading the manual and trying to train the program and am making slow progress. Slow seems to be the key word in this situation. The headphones that come with the package are the same as what my daughter got with her home edition. The microphone seems okay, and I have tried to program with background noise and with no noise and it works okay. I will also test with my daughters better microphone next time.

UPDATES TO COMEnI had SO much trouble installing and trying to do simple things with this program. I wanted to outline my journey through what would probably get many people to quit long before I did, so I wanted to post this review right away. If I can help anyone by letting them know that it eventually DID install and work, I want to encourage you. I think that the program is worth having, but I did not expect such a frustrating long and drawn out experience just to get it to run and print on my system!nnI will update with comments on usage after I have had a chance to really train the program and see if I can get it to work better for me than it did for my daughter. For now I am giving it three stars due to my experience which I felt was way more difficult than it needed to be.