Dragon Bar Menu When On Top of Page Review of Nuance Dragon Professional Individual Version 15.3 For Windows I am back to using dictation rather than typing the articles. I don’t know how long this will last, because I actually seem to think better while I’m typing, but an injury to my arm has made it easier for me to dictate than type. I am pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the program I am using. I have used several versions of it over the years. Actually, if I wanted to, there is the ability of Windows 10 to do this in the newest version of office. I tried that first, but found that Dragon Professional 15.3 is extremely accurate and easy to use. The software has improved so much over the years that it has really impressed me. The difference between this software and using the built-in Windows software is ease of use and a very rich catalog of commands. The one downside I find is Dragon software is not cheap. I think the version I am using cost about $150. The reason I don’t know the price exactly is I was able to update my Dragon software to the latest version for free. There are a lot of options you can select when you use the software. The first thing I’d like to talk about is the choice of menu mode when you run the program. You can have a menu which is one line deep and goes just about anywhere you want and stays there for you as you use Dragon. This allows you to avail yourself of all the different venues. If you don’t like a bar you can select an expandable box that has the commands in it. The bar or the box can be located on the top bottom or sides of your screen, it is your choice. The control for this selection is located on the extreme left if you use the bar. To the right of that selector is the picture of a microphone and clicking on it turns it on and off. There are two more controls next to that. These controls are indicators of what is going on and you will also see some information in the window that is shown. If you use the bar on the right side you will find menus. You have the profile menu, the tools menu, the vocabulary menu, the modes menu, the audio menu, and the help menu. It is important to note that a profile is created for you when you use this program. The profile can be updated to take advantage of the software learning new words in such and crediting you with them. You do this by backing up your profile after each use which is done automatically. The first time you use the program you should let it read anything you wrote to get an idea of how you structure your writing. You can actually do this any time and it is a valuable tool to improve accuracy. It is claimed the accuracy of the program right out of the box is 99.9% and I would say that is pretty close to the truth. New profiles under other names can be created, all you have to do is go to the profile menu, open it and click on manage user profiles. There are other profile tools in that menu also. The next menu is the tools menu. It contains DragonPad, Dictation Box, transcribing tools, and a lot of other useful tools. The transcribing tools allow you to use a recording to create text. DragonPad brings up a window which is almost like a mini word processor window. It allows you to type into it and it too has its own menus and commands. Some people use this instead of typing directly into a word processor. This way you only have one program loaded. You can also use the dictation box to write into. If you need to create custom commands you can go to the tools menu and click on custom commands and create your own. There is a sort of macro recording which you can accomplish also which you will have to learn. There are some other selections in the tools menu, but I think I’ve covered the ones most people will use except for the options menu at the bottom. In the options menu you can select many different items under the general captions for correction, commands, Appearance, Hot Keys, Playback/Text to Speech, Miscellaneous, Data, Dragon Anywhere and Upgrade to Legal. In case you are wondering, Upgrade to Legal means spending more money to get the version for legal use. I am not covering that here. Dragon Anywhere allows you to share your article. Everything else is pretty much self-explanatory in options. The vocabulary menu allows you to have the program study documents to improve its accuracy and these documents can include your email. You can also use it to add words or phrases. You can also import or export words and phrases. It also allows you to manage vocabularies and open a recent vocabulary. The modes menu allows you to pick the mode you want to begin, such as normal for dictating, but you can also go into command, numbers, or spelling mode from there. The audio mode as choices like read that, playback, check microphone, reset audio calibration, improve word recognition and launch accuracy tuning. These are all pretty obvious so I won’t bother delving into them. The last menu was the help menu. It contains just about everything you need to make Dragon work flawlessly. This is also where you register your software for updates. There is a selection for technical assistance. It contains a link for interactive help and also help topics among other things. Right after the help menu are some down pointing arrows. If you click on them it brings up a corrections menu with different selections to correct mistakes you have made and it also contains a little bit of information along with a button to transcribe a recording. I have to tell you I am extremely satisfied with Nuance Dragon Professional Individual 15.3. It meets and maybe even surpasses any expectations I had for it. As I said I’ve used it in the past but not this version and in the beginning, it was nerve-racking because it made a lot of mistakes. Let me first say nothing is perfect, but this version comes as close to perfect as I believe we could ever get. I haven’t even told you about what some people might consider the best part, which is you can control your computer with it. You can’t exactly do everything but you can search the web with it, search websites like eBay, open other sites and even search for videos. Need to search your computer you can do that too
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