Dragon NaturallySpeaking Pro 3.5 Summary Paul Jones
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 3.5 Professional Edition is listed at around $700 (although it can be purchased for a few hundred less if you know where to shop--see the BuyBuddy links in the side-bar to the right of this page). The price alone narrows the market to those who have extra money lying around, those who stand to save a lot of time (read: money) by not having to type their documents manually, and those who simply must have the latest and greatest gizmos and gadgets. However, for those with less need for this kind of software (or less money), the Preferred and Standard Editions sell for much less and are usually more than sufficient for home and school needs.
For those on the go, Dragon Systems, Inc. even sells a NaturallyMobile Recorder you can use to dictate on the run. When you get back to the computer, you plug in the NaturallyMobile Recorder and your PC transcribes what you recorded. Very slick.
I loved Dragon NaturallySpeaking's ease of use, accuracy, and myriad features. The only things I didn't like about it were the MouseGrid and the slow speed when used with bare minimum requirements. However, with the recommended requirements (or better), I found it to be fast as well as accurate.
There are features in the Professional Edition that I didn't even get to--the biggest one being Dragon NaturallySpeaking's ability to create macros. It comes with a Creating Voice Commands guide for advanced users. This delves into the Dragon NaturallySpeaking scripting language and is more advanced than most users will need, but it's great to have it there for those so inclined.
With all said and done, if you plan to use only the minimum hardware requirements, hold off until you can get a better computer or you'll be seven paragraphs ahead of your computer at any given time. But if you have the recommended requirements, or better, go for it! You'll have a great time and you will dictate documents far faster than you could ever type them, thus freeing up more of that special thing called Time.
