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.