The history of Dragon Naturally Speaking started out in 1977 with Dr James Baker, as a simple Speech Understanding System that was simply called Dragon. Dr Baker worked on the system until 1982 when he and his wife, Dr Janet Baker, evolved the software into Dragon Systems, a Voice Recognition System.

Dragon is a speech-recognition program that can be used to, among other things, dictate answers to homework questions, a five-paragraph essay, or even to write a novel. You can dictate an e-mail, surf the web using voice commands, or dictate on your Blackberry, iPhone, iPad or iPad touch.

Under optimal conditions users should achieve between 98% and 99.5% accuracy with Dragon Professional Individual (DPI) 15 out of the box. There are a number of variables that will help you achieve great recognition accuracy with Dragon: As software, Dragon works the way it's designed to work.

Dragon makes it easy to automate tasks or shortcut repetitive steps. Use custom voice commands to insert standard boilerplate text or signatures into documents or create time‑saving macros to automate multi‑step workflows by voice. Share these customizations across the Dragon user community for efficiency gains.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking (also known as Dragon for PC, or DNS) is a speech recognition software package developed by Dragon Systems of Newton, Massachusetts, which was acquired in turn by Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, Nuance Communications, and Microsoft. It runs on Windows personal computers.

The Bottom Line. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 isn't perfect, but it's the best dictation software available. We don't find this upgrade necessary for the most basic dictation, although new features may benefit heavily accented English speakers and those who rely heavily on voice commands.

Check your microphone and sound card by running the Check Microphone wizard. If your audio signal level is low, more memory is used to recognize your speech and Dragon's performance is slower. For more information, see Performing a microphone check. Adjust your laptop battery conservation settings.

Jodie told us that Dragon lets students use dictation to text to get their thoughts into the computer at speed, and this is a real benefit to them. He talked about how Dragon can help people with learning difficulties like dyslexia or other conditions where they find it challenging to express their ideas in writing.

Our panelist with language-processing disabilities said Dragon was one of the most accurate dictation options they tried, and the robust command features made it possible for them to quickly navigate their machine.

Open a new blank document in your word processor of choice (e.g. Microsoft Word). Press the “dictation” button on Dragon or say “start dictation” to begin transcribing. Start the interview and speak clearly and naturally. Dragon will transcribe your words into the written text as you speak.

Voice recognition in Dragon turns speech into written text at a fast speed, so that, Jodie said, “those disability effects essentially disappear for most people.” Dragon is also recommended by Jodie for students who have physical difficult using a keyboard or a mouse.

DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac is proprietary speech recognition software. The older program, DragonDictate, was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows, and was replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows. It was later acquired by Nuance Communications.