Dragon Naturally Speaking Does It Run Well On Parallels For Mac

Someone asked me recently whether their friend should purchase Dragon Home or Dragon Premium.

Jun 24, 2015 Quick look at Dragon NaturallySpeaking running on Parallels - Untrained profile running on a well-equipped 2015 iMac. I have been using Dragon Naturally Speaking (Professional for Medical dictation) version 9 on an aging PC machine. I would have preferred using something that was compatible with the Mac since I have used Macs for almost 20 years but there was nothing that offered the features of Dragon.

@CharJTF I'll blog about this, but always Premium. Extensible. Compatible with Excel and PPT. Lets you do text and graphics macros. @jfc3

— Eric Wright (@ewaccess) October 15, 2014

Get Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 13 for Windows. Dragon Home is missing useful features. Most of Dragon Professional’s useful functionality can be achieved using third party tools.

Expanding the question from Dragon Home vs. Dragon Premium to the whole universe of Dragon-brand computer products, the question of which one to buy is more complicated than it should be. It involves three factors that I’ll consider below:

  • Which platform (Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, or Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac)?
  • Which version (For Dictate, 3 or 4. For NaturallySpeaking, the latest version is 13)?
  • Which edition (Home, Premium, Professional, Legal, or Medical)?

This decision is the easiest one to make. If you want to run Dragon on Windows, get Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you want to run Dragon on Mac, do you want to use Mac OS while doing it?

For the Mac

Does

Quite simply, if you’re using a Mac and you want to run a Dragon program designed to run natively on Mac OS, you should get Dragon Dictate for Mac. The current version of Dragon Dictate for Mac is version 4. Personally, I’m still using version 3. I wrote a Dragon Dictate 3 review in 2012. Truth is, not much has changed about Dragon Dictate since then. The core speech engine (which recognizes your voice and transcribes it to text) is better with each version, but in terms of new features and capability from its predecessor, Dragon Dictate 4 was such an incremental upgrade over its predecessor that I wasn’t compelled to write about it. My Dictate 3 review stands.

Dragon Dictate for Mac isn’t the only option for Dragon users on Mac hardware. You can install Dragon NaturallySpeaking (the Windows version of Dragon) on Windows, provided you can install Windows on an Intel-based Mac. If you go this route, you can either install NaturallySpeaking on Windows using Boot Camp or you can install NaturallySpeaking from within a virtual machine.

Personally, I run Dragon NaturallySpeaking on my MacBook Air using a VirtualBox virtual machine. People have written volumes on whether BootCamp or virtualization is superior. Suffice it to say that Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 runs very well on my virtual machine (Intel i7 Processor, 4 GB of RAM, 60 GB SSD), but that if I were looking to get a computer specifically to run Dragon NaturallySpeaking then I would get a Windows PC. Virtual machines are convenient for when you occasionally need something from multiple operating systems, but they’re not worth consistent, intense resource usage (by which I mean the whirring fans and toasty lap) that come from hours of dictating on a FrankenMac.

For the PC

If you’re going to get DNS, the question of which version number to get is easy. Always get the latest version that you can afford. Unlike Dragon Dictate, each release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is faster, less-resource intensive, and more powerful than its predecessors. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 is the best version of Dragon there has ever been. The only caveat to the advice is to always get the latest version of Dragon that you can afford is to avoid Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 or 11.5. Version 11 introduced a new UI and a new speech model. Both of those things were ultimately useful (and they have been carried over and improved upon in subsequent versions), but at the new speech model introduced significant latency that made Dragon borderline unusable for users who weren’t comfortable changing their speech model and modifying the options.ini file.

You want Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Premium. This is true if you are:

Dragon Naturally Speaking Does It Run Well On Parallels For Mac Download

  • New to Dragon
  • A user who is not concerned with full voice control of their computer or automating complex tasks with voice macros
  • A web accessibility professional looking for a cheap, fully capable testing tool
  • A user with a disability who wants a cheap alternative to Dragon Professional for personal use

But Dragon Home is cheaper! Can’t I just get that?

You could, but you probably shouldn’t. If you like speech computing at all, you’ll quickly become frustrated by its shortcomings. Nuance offers a helpful Feature Comparison Matrix [PDF] that itemizes the differences between Dragon Home and Dragon Premium.

Among some of the things you can do with Premium that you can’t do with Home:

  • You can dictate into Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint, and control those programs by voice.
  • Advanced Correction plays back what you said (in your own voice) while you edit your document. Knowing exactly what sounds Dragon transcribed is essential when trying to decide how to effectively correct any mistakes it makes.
  • You can use Dragon with a mobile app for Android or iOS in lieu of a microphone
  • You can save and import your custom vocabulary in case you want to carry it over into a new profile, a new install or new version of Dragon
  • You can create simple “text-and-graphics” commands, such as “my logo” to insert a logo a document, “my signature” to insert an e-mail signature, or simple phrases to insert often-repeated text.

Advanced Correction (the ability to hear what you dictated when you’re trying to figure out whether Dragon mistranscribed something or whether you misspoke) is a can’t-miss feature, and that alone is worth the price of admission for Premium.

It’s a KnowBrainer

The biggest reason to prefer Dragon Premium to Home is that Premium is extensible. Premium is compatible with third-party add-ons like Vocola and KnowBrainer. With these, you can use Dragon Premium to create custom voice commands to automate any task on a Windows PC.

I have also used Voice Computer, SpeechStart+, and ShowNumbers Plus. All of these tools offer additional hands-free functionality at a cost substantially lower than purchasing a Professional version of Dragon, and none of them are compatible with Dragon Home.

My favorite add-on is KnowBrainer. Not only does it work with Dragon Premium to offer advanced scripting functionality comparable to that of Dragon Professional, but it is free to people with disabilities and assistive technology professionals.

Why should I get Dragon Medical?

  • If you or your practice need to be HIPAA compliant
  • If you need to dictate into an EMR on Nuance’s EMR Whitelist
    If you need to use Hidden Mode [Flash demo]. Hidden Mode is an exclusive feature of Dragon Medical that allows you to dictate into a non-active window.
  • If you want to save time by not having to create your own specialized medical vocabulary.

Dragon Medical also contains every feature of Dragon Premium and Professional.

Dragon Naturally Speaking Does It Run Well On Parallels For Mac Air

Why should I get Dragon Legal?

Unlike Dragon Medical, I don’t see the value proposition of Dragon Legal. Dragon Legal contains no extra features or functionality beyond those of Dragon Professional. Dragon Legal does have an extensive legal vocabulary, but the Professional and Premium versions of Dragon can transcribe most legal terms and styles accurately by default. I think that most Legal professionals will be well-served by buying Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional and simply adding any unknown words or phrases to its vocabulary. Moreover, Dragon Legal’s language model is for American lawyers only, so if you’re outside of the United States then its value proposition is further reduced.

What about Dragon Professional?

Dragon Naturally Speaking Does It Run Well On Parallels For Mac

I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 Professional. For years I was satisfied with my combination of Dragon Premium and KnowBrainer, which gave me full, hands-free access to my computer and the ability to create custom commands for $99. I recently outgrew it though and upgraded to using Dragon Professional even for personal computing. Dragon Professional has every feature in Premium, and some additional ones that I love:

  • Deferred correction. I can save a copy of my spoken dictation with my documents so that I can go back to them over multiple sittings and still remember what I said. This performs identically to the Advanced Correction in Dragon Premium, but with Premium you lose your spoken when you close a document, meaning you need to edit your dictations in the same sitting that you compose them.
  • Step-by-Step commands. Dragon Professional contains a GUI that lets you build custom voice commands by stringing simple actions together from a list. This is the quickest and easiest way to create custom voice commands.
  • Open-ended commands. New to Dragon 13 Professional, it’s now possible to create commands that accept free-form dictation. Meaning, I can create commands to “Search Website X for [whatever query I speak]. Dragon Premium has long had the ability to search Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Wikipedia for free-form queries, but the ability to create custom searches or to act on any file in a specific directory will be a big time saver for me.
  • Easier control over custom vocabularies. Dragon Premium lets you import and export custom vocabularies, but Dragon Professional gives you more granular control over custom pronunciations.
  • It is compatible with Utter Command, a third-party add-on that enables you to perform complex actions using an efficient, intuitive syntax.
  • Dragon’s Advanced Scripting engine. If you don’t have a third-party command utility, Dragon Professional lets you create powerful, flexible macros to perform any action by voice.

Most of these features are for power users. If they appeal to you, Dragon Professional is worth the price of admission.

Correction- October 20, 2014: This article originally implied that Utter Command was compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium. This has been edited to clarify that Utter Command is only compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional, Medical, and Legal. I regret any confusion.