VMware Communities: Message List - Dragon Naturally Speaking

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

George B — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:03:38 GMT

Just reading throught Camner's May post, about DNS activations.

I'm about to get a (new) MacBook 13", and would like to run DNS.

Is there any way of reassuring Dragon tech support that another (required) DNS restoration/activation is on the same Fusion/Mac platform?

Don't want to get hung up on something like that, when I'm quite new to VMWare Fusion (on new Mac Mini). I just was on the Fusion beta, and that worked so great that I purchased Fusion. But now am behind the eight-ball. Had put the new, purchased number for Fusion in, and thought I'd be ok. But then was on travel for a while, and turned off the Mac Mini. Opened up when I got back, rather tried to open Fusion, but it acts as if the new license hadn't been put in. Have to get material done for my job, and doing that on a ThinkPad. Will try and figure out Fusion issue when I'm back from another week of travel.

George B.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

n601bs — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:13:31 GMT

Have you had issues with DNS becoming unstable requiring restoration on Parallels? I have been using DNS medical on a powerbook for over a year with intermittent good results. It will work like a champ for a week followed by pathetic recognition and a crash. Have not upgraded to leopard yet; do not suspect it will help this problem. Any thoughts?

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

camner — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:56:10 GMT

I have been running DNS preferred on my (snow, not aluminum) iMac Core duo with VMWare Fusion for nearly a year. It works flawlessly (with the same mic, an old Parrot VXI Express through an Andrea USB sound pod). To make it really hum, I needed to max out my iMac with 3GB, and I devote about 1.1GB to the VM (any less and it bogs down!). I've taken the advice of posts here and elsewhere and changed the setting to maximize HOST (Mac) performance (something about a potentially nasty bug....). I would say, anecdotally, that the speed of using DNS on the iMac is roughly comparable to the 4 year old Dell 2.8GHz Pentium 4 I had before, and it's faster than running DNS on my Dell laptop.

I briefly tried Parallels with DNS, and had trouble. It was much pokier, and beyond that, Parallels hogged my Mac's resources so I didn't every keep Parallels open while I worked on the OS X side.

I've read posts elsewhere (not this board) about potential issues with the software activation. Nuance only gives 10 activations. Whenever you make certain kinds of changes to the virtual machine setup, DNS thinks you've changed the hardware DNS is on, and then uses up another activation. I figure I'm up to about 7 activations, although I'm still using on what I think of as the "same machine!" I hear that while Nuance tech support is willing to reset one's activation count via a phone call (after determining somehow that you aren't making a tidy profit selling DNS on the side!), when you respond to the question "what's your machine setup?" with "I run DNS through Fusion on a Mac" they say "we don't support macs." This is 3rd hand testimony, at best, so should be taken with the appropriately large grain....

I've also run DNS through Fusion on a Mac Pro 4 core.....FUN!

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

matthewls — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:58:41 GMT

docgob wrote:
I'm wondering if I can solicit some assistance here.

I am an emergency physician.
I have been using the medical version of Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS),
eighth edition on a PC for a couple of years now. I have become quite frustrated with the
recurrent problems with my PC, and I am seriously considering by a Mac. I'd still like to run my DNS, however.

I understand from the conversation I had today with one of the
support reps at Macspeech that "Macspeech dictate" is roughly the
equivalent of the standard version of DNS.
They do not have a timeline for the introduction of either a preferred
version or a professional version with medical vocabulary. Thus, it seems that I will have to run
Windows on my Mac to make the medical version of DNS functional.

I have my copy of Mac speech dictate already, having cross graded IListen 1.8.in terms of transcription Mac speech dictate is truly impressive. It is accurate and fast (easily comparable to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5), and I was able to import a list of my custom vocabulary words (e.g. amygdalectomy, acetylcholinergic ) without any problem. The major disadvantages of Mac speech dictate in its current version is that it does not have the flexibility and range of computer control that Dragon NaturallySpeaking provides. For example, you cannot correct spelling or transcription errors on the fly the way you can with Dragon. It does have a macro creation facility and editor which I have not yet explored. Right now as a truly useful program it is still far behind NaturallySpeaking 9.5 professional (or medical), and even version 8.0 even if it is not as accurate, is probably more useful overall.

While I’m cognizant of the site we’re on, I still have to
ask the following questions:

You should definitely ask these questions here, as they are relevant for many VM Ware fusion users. Another site that you may want to check out is the Knowbrainer site's forum, which also has some discussions about these issues.

How does VMware fusion compare to parallel for running DNS?

I have found VMware fusion to be superior to parallels for getting serious work done, even though parallels appears to be much faster in certain ways (e.g. loading programs and screen drawing. A major advantage of the current version of fusion is that it can run multiple virtual machines and runs 64-bit editions of Windows quite well.

What about other Windows apps?

I have not found a Windows application that I couldn't run under fusion so far. In fact tonight I used Windows Internet Explorer to connect to my office machine through remote desktop type through a virtual private network, and it was basically a seamless operation.

How does VMware to compare to boot camp for running DNS?

I've used both boot camp and VM Ware fusion, and a boot camp does run Windows faster than VM Ware, the advantages of running seamlessly inside the Mac OS far outweighs the small speed difference between the two platforms.

If I go with VMware fusion on a new Mac will DNS run as well as it does presently on my PC?

I'm running VM Ware fusion on a Mac book Pro that I got in October. It's running OS 10.5.2, fusion 1.1.1, and I'm transcribing all of my replies here in a 64-bit version of Windows XP professional using Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional 9.5. (if you do any research on this you will find that NaturallySpeaking is not supported on 64-bit operating systems, but that there are ways of getting it installed... until tonight I was using Windows XP 32-bit edition professional, but I thought I'd give this one a whirl... it's actually great.)

Given the suggestion off at least one gig of memory be
dedicated to the VMware fusion for running DNS should I consider buying more
than two gigs of memory for my Mac to improve performance?

my Mac book Pro has four gigs of RAM, which was an inexpensive purchase as long as you don't get the memory from Apple. I got mine from Newegg.com. So, order your Mac book with all of the high-end features that you can afford, but save hundreds of dollars by ordering the minimal memory and buying the rest elsewhere.

The bottom line is the combination of fusion, Windows XP, and naturally speaking running on the Mac platform is spectacular, and I fully intend to make my next desktop PC and Macintosh workstation. There is essentially no disadvantage and many advantages--the machine is brilliant and you can run many operating systems on top of the Mac, but it's relatively difficult to run Mac on top of any other OS so far.

Thanks

You are quite welcome. This entire message is dictated using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to transcribe my speech via Firefox running under Windows XP professional 64-bit edition displayed in unity mode on my Mac OS 10.5.2 desktop.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jalafata — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:21:09 GMT

I have been using DNS on my Mac now without significant difficulty.
Initially I was using it through its own partition, but since I have
installed Fusion VM and eclinical EMR. It works quite fine with
Fusion, and now I can flip back and forth from Windows and Mac
applications. without difficulty. I did have some difficulty with my
hand held philips mike (USP), but switch to a logitech desktop mice
USP, which works fine.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

etung — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:04:54 GMT

I have not run DNS, nor have I tried Parallels, so I can't directly answer your questions. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Pro - Voice Recognition Software - Will It Work w/ VMWare Fusion (Mac)? may be of interest.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

dkwehe — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:21:54 GMT

As I understand it, MacSpeech Dictate is not DNS. I believe that when it does get shipped, the initial version won't allow dictation into other applications. This could be a show-stopper for you.

I use DNS and dictate into any application on the Mac side. It's not trivial to do this, it's much easier to stay on the Windows side using Parallels or Fusion.

How does VMware fusion compare to parallel for running DNS? Fusion is more stable, but slower in response. The latter is why I use Parallels.

What about other Windows apps? What about them? I prefer the Mac equivalents.

How does VMware to compare to boot camp for running DNS? I don't use BC, otherwise I'd just buy a PC. Once you get used to a Mac, you'll never go back. It's like comparing an old Ford Fiesta to a new Mercedes.

If I go with VMware fusion on a new Mac will DNS run as well as it does presently on my PC? I would surmise they are reasonably close, except that the Mac is rock solid.

Given the suggestion off at least one gig of memory be
dedicated to the VMware fusion for running DNS should I consider buying more
than two gigs of memory for my Mac to improve performance? If you can go with 4 GB, that should be more than enough. I have more, but it's not needed.DNS needs about 1 GB just by itself. If you have 2 GB for the Windows side and 2 GB for the Mac side, you'll be golden.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

docgob — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:53:27 GMT

I'm wondering if I can solicit some assistance here.

While I’m cognizant of the site we’re on, I still have to
ask the following questions:

How does VMware fusion compare to parallel for running DNS?

What about other Windows apps?

How does VMware to compare to boot camp for running DNS?

What about other Windows apps?

If I go with VMware fusion on a new Mac will DNS run as well as it does presently on my PC?

Given the suggestion off at least one gig of memory be
dedicated to the VMware fusion for running DNS should I consider buying more
than two gigs of memory for my Mac to improve performance?

Thanks

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

ofclerc — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:53:43 GMT

Although all of the above help incrementally, the majority of the
benefit came with switching from XP x86 to x64. (Also tried Vista x64
but performance was not nearly comparable).

Hi,

How do I know which XP I have ? I know it's a family one, but not what exact version it is.

At present DNS is not working properly. I don't know whether it comes from the microphone (when I use the WIndows recorder, I hear my voice very low and very slow !), from the audio-in design of Windows, or from something else. I should get a new microphone by tomorrow.

Thanks for any help !

Olivier

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jalafata — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:14:10 GMT

Your note was very helpful. I have the same set up as you and also use for Medical dictation. However, I have not been able to get my microphone (Philips USB as yours) to be recognized through VMF. I did set the system setting in MAC and it does pick up sound from the mic. However there is no USB (symbol) indication on the VM side at the bottom right screen on which I can click to activate the mic. Suggestion?

thanks.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jer55 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:13:47 GMT

How do I know? I think it's connected to the guest, since the USB blue icon shines on the bottom right... but again, I'm not sure it's a mic issue since when I first install it, the mic works fine!

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

etung — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:04:36 GMT

Is the USB mic connected to the guest or used by OS X?

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jer55 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:41:14 GMT

Nope, I'm using a Logitech USB mic - a fairly decent one too. I am using Leopard

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

etung — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:13:12 GMT

Are you using Leopard and the internal microphone? I believe there's a known issue where sound input is garbled under these circumstances.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jer55 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:56:41 GMT

I need some help...

I have a macbookpro, 17", 2 2.33, 2gigs... I run vmware 1.1 (62573). I have win xp professional installed, in addition to word 2007. I've installed DNS 9.0 and have upgraded to 9.5. Here's the kicker: it works, but my user database keeps getting corrupted such that I'll run DNS and it will produce gibberish in response to my voice... when this happens, I load a backup user file and it works fine, for a while, but then does the same thing. I've spoken to DNS support, and of course they won't support vmware, but they say to "make sure you shut down DNS before you shut down windows." Would suspending the vmware session corrupt the user file? Has anyone else heard of this problem? I'm considering just buying a second computer to do my medical dictations but I didn't want to have to go that route..

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jkilpatrickmd — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:35:18 GMT

No , it has wrked great wehn on a regular windows machine with no drivers, and I did try checking the settings in Windows. I saw the link 3 posts above and am going to see if that helps

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

matthewls — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:19:26 GMT

Does the phillips mic require special drivers? I'm asking because the plantronics cs50 that I use does not use any--it's recognized by windows and works w/o problem in the VM.

Also, have you checked your audio settings inside winxp VM?

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

jkilpatrickmd — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:41:01 GMT

I am trying to set this up for medical transciption using xp and os10.5.1 with a phillips mic - it picks up the mic when I go thru the initial set up , but when I go to the training sessions and click "go " a pop up window comes on that says "sound will not be available." the microphone is seected in the usb ports on the bottom left and I can hear their demo back thru the microphone - any suggestions?

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

matthewls — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:16:26 GMT

following your lead I tried using Dragon in a XP 64 virtual machine. It worked fine, but not as well as in the XP 32-bit edition I've got working. I'll try to increase the memory of the VM.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

MandarMS — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:31:47 GMT

can you Try this DNS KB artical http://knowledgebase.nuance.com/view.asp?60VQ=IHIF&5d7r4B=Zvp412u10r

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

sokolovss — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:12:05 GMT

Yes to all.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

dkwehe — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:59:23 GMT

Sokolovss:

Outstanding response. It sounds like you have a working version using
Fusion 1.1 and 10.5.1? You are using Leopard?

dkw

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

sokolovss — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:14:25 GMT

I have found the following to be a superior configuration. This yields the best performance I have ever gotten from DNS on Mac or native PC:

XP x64 and fusion 1.1, MBP 2.4 17", 160 GB HD 7200 rpm. Allot 1024 mb for VM.
Install DNS 9 first. Do not uninstall 9 but rather use the DNS 9.5 upgrade (will not install of x64 if DNS 9 not installed first or if 9 is removed).
Sennheiser M3 and Buddy USB pod.

Although all of the above help incrementally, the majority of the benefit came with switching from XP x86 to x64. (Also tried Vista x64 but performance was not nearly comparable).

Hope others find this helpful.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

bbarranco — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:12:02 GMT

Yes, DNS does work on the Mac side. It just is in a round about way. On the VM side, it works seamlessly. I do not know about with Vista as I do not have it. I run Win XP Pro w/ SP2. To use DNS on the mac side, just open the VM and start running windows. Next open a wordpad or word document ON THE WINDOWS SIDE. With DNS up and running, say the command "show dictation box". This opens the dictation box and you can dictate whatever you want. When you are finished, highlight the text you dictated and then right click onit and select copy. Now click on the Mac OS side and put you cursor in word, excel, powerpoint, pages, numbers, keynote, firfox, or mail and the select paste and it pastes the text that you generated using DNS. I know it is a work aorund but it does work.

Your last question, do you have to install Windows. Yes because to my knowledge DNS is only compatible with windows.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

dkwehe — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:03:36 GMT

I haven't been able to get the sound to work in Fusion 1.1 for DNS. I get "Failed to Connect to Sound Device in VM". XP either 32 or 64 bit versions.

dkw.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

etung — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:25:38 GMT

If I run Fusion, I'll be able to run Dragon in Mac programs on the "Mac side" of the computer, including anything in the Office Suite and Firefox?

No, Dragon will be limited to running in the VM.

Will I still have to install Windows on the Mac?

Yes, you still need Windows.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

gogoshire — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 05:59:43 GMT

I beg your patience as I'm new to all of this, but I'm in the market for anything that will give me a break from my carpal tunnel, and I just want to make sure that I have the facts straight before I drop dough:

If I run Fusion, I'll be able to run Dragon in Mac programs on the "Mac side" of the computer, including anything in the Office Suite and Firefox? And if I can't dedicate 2G of memory to it (which I won't be able to as my new Macbook just has 2G SDRAM), it will drag a bit, but will still function?

Do I have this correct? Because it was my understanding that I could only run DNS on the VM (either Fusion or Parallel), which is not what I want. I'd rather go the iListen route then, and I've heard such bad things about it.

Will I still have to install Windows on the Mac? If so, does it matter if it's XP or Vista?

Much thanks.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

bbarranco — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:29:53 GMT

OK. I finally got this thing to work. Just a recap. I have a 24"iMac
2.16 ghz intel duo core processor with 2gb RAM (1gb to the Mac and 1gb
to Fusion). I am running Leopard 10.5.1 (the new update released last
week) and have installed Fusion 1.1 and am running Win XP Pro w/ SP2. I
have put dragon naturally speaking (DNS) on and loaded all of my
voabulaires from the PC I use it on at my office. I am a physician and
we use DNS to transcribe our dictations into a electronic medical
record. I have tested a Phillips Speechmike Pro II USB microphone and a
Logitech desktop USB microphone and both work great. In fact, with the
Phillips Speechmike Pro II, I have even gotten the "Function keys" -
specifically the record button - programmed to turn the microphone on
and off.

Here is what I did. BEFORE starting the VM, plug in
whichever USB device you are going to use. Next, in OS X, click system
preferences, then sound, then input, and then click the USB device you
have plugged in. This now tells the MAC that the USB device will be the
audio input for the CPU. Now start the VM. Once it is up and running,
along the bottom right of the VM screen you will see some USB symbols
next to the CD symbol. Put the mouse pointer over the USB symbols and
it will tell you what is connected to each one. When you find the
symbol that has your microphone device connected, click the USB symbol
and then click "Connect". This now tells the VM to use this device for
audio input. That is it. You are now ready to use the microphone and
DNS.

I have tried this same scenario with a Line/In microphone
and headset microphone without success. From what I have read on the
discussion boards, it does not appear as if Fusion supports Line/In
devices (I may be wrong on that but I have not read otherwise and
cannot get it to work myself). The only other tidbit I would offer is
that DNS is very RAM and Processor intensive. On a PC I use 2gb of RAM
just for the DNS and it works well. If you have performance problems, I
would try to designate at least 2gb of RAM to the VM if possible. I
think it will help with overall performance.

I welcome anyone elses feedback, experiences, tips or tricks.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

vinayv — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:06:20 GMT

In fact, with the Fusion RC, you cannot use multiple Sound devices. That is, you can't tell Fusion to use a specific sound device as input or output. It will simply pipe the default input/output device.

As mentioned by the other user, you should just be able to "connect the USB device" to the Virtual Machine. This means, plug it into your computer, and then on the vm, find the appropriate USB device on the status bar (bottom right of the window) and click on connect. This is equivalent to unplugging the USB from your mac, and plugging it in to the VM. The VM should be able to recognize and use it with whatever software you choose.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

theb3freak — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:05:33 GMT

I honestly don't recall the specifics, but I just plug in the USB mic, and/or make sure that it is connected in Fusion, and launch DNS. I have at times forgotten to connect the USB mic, launched DNS, and received a message to the effect that it can't find the mic, then connected the mic into Fusion, and merely continued loading my user into DNS. I have never had to "trick" DNS into using a pseudo line-in.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

rkowal — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:36:47 GMT

theb3freak,

how does the setup of the USB mic work in Fusion? Do you let Fusion recognize the mic as a USB mic, or do you (as in Parallels) tell the VM to ignore USB, designate your audio input source as "line-in" in DNS, and let OS X recognize the USB mic?

Thanks

Robert

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

theb3freak — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:38:01 GMT

I have an intel imac with 2 Ghz duo core 2, 1GB RAM. Naturally speaking 8 has always worked in Boot Camp (Win XP, SP2), and quite well at that. I use a Plantronics USB headset. It never worked right with the Parallels trial that I tried. Fusion B4, using the Boot Camp partition worked great. Better still, I have been running it in a new VM (again, XP), and have to say it works very well. For what its worth, I can even play streaming audio or iTunes in OSX through the speakers, while AT THE SAME TIME dictating and playing back my dictation through the USB headset, obviously with Dragon in the VM. I copied/imported my speech files from the Boot Camp partition into the VM. It works very well. I dictate and edit 45-100 page documents into WordPerfect 10, now in a Fusion VM.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

etchak — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:37:38 GMT

For Dragon you need lot of memory and a good performing processor.
I think it will work but...my choice will be Boot Camp.

Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

etung — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:01:32 GMT

VMware is a company. Fusion is their Mac product. I highly doubt VMware will support another company's unrelated product.

However, if you're asking if Fusion will run DNS, I haven't tried it myself but there are reports that it does - search the forums for "Dragon Naturally Speaking"

Dragon Naturally Speaking

Bert Pepper — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:25:26 GMT

Will VMWare support Dragon Naturally Speaking?