Dragon Naturally Speaking

Hello,

I'm using my brother's laptop cuz I'm on vacation. It's a Satellite and I can't get it to work with Dragon NS. After 3 days of this, I understand why they named the program Dragon!! Seriously, I have used DNS at home for 6 years on a desktop without problems.

The issue now is that I can't get his laptop to hear me dictate. Spent hours on the phone with Toshiba tech support and they couldn't help (they actually shut down my sister-in-law's laptop by disabling a driver that we couldn't reinstall.)

Anyway, any suggestions? The mic is plugged in. The training worked fine tho once or twice I got error messages when testing audio control but then it passed. Still when I dictate, nothing prints out or just jibberish. Would greatly appreciate help.

Thx. Sigrid

 

Have you tried uninstalling then reinstalling the program?

 

yeah, i did that twice. it still can't understand me. i say "how are you today?" and it types " yeah in him him in in." any other ideas? thanks!

 

Hmm. Perhaps the input is faulty and Dragon can't recognize it. This may seem simple, but I'd try another microphone. Try going to Tools > Accuracy Center in your Dragon control panel to look in 'Improve your acoustics'. I have a old version of the program, but my guess is it is in the newer versions as well.

 

Hi Bill, Thanks for the tips.I'm on vacation & don't have another mic - could buy one but I'm not sure that will solve the problem. When i open music files, they play fine and I hear them thru my mic... Will do as you say with the acoustic optimizer... Is there anything else that could be configured wrong for the mic - a software issue rather than hardware? Know-brainer has suggested buying an adapter or battery box but Im only using this laptop for two or 3 weeks. Thx. S

 

My thought is that either the input or the program itself is the problem and not other hardware or software. Did it ever work when you first installed on the laptop? Do you have any other software installed that might block interaction between software programs like some firewalls?

I'm thinking also that perhaps the microphone could be over modulating. You might try turning down the input volume on the microphone; go to Start > Control Panel > Sounds & Audio Devices and turn down the input?

Then again you could hire a nice sweet blonde to take dictation.

 

Hi. I saw your post. Can I use naturally speaking to search the web. Will NS understand search commands and commands to click-on links? Will older versions, 5 and 6 do this?

 

I'm sure the newer versions will and I believe versions back to DNS 5.0 personal will as well. On an old site, I found this:

 

The people at Dragon told me that anything less than vr. 8 will not work with XP. Someone on ebay told me the same thing--Dragon 5 installed but wouldn't run. Support at Dragon (Nuance, now) also said that even though you can enter search terms in search boxes using Dragon you still have to click on the search button. And Dragon standard wont' work with Wordperfect. If anyone has any experience with QPointer Hands free please post.