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Bert_Pepper
Contributor
Contributor

Dragon Naturally Speaking

Will VMWare support Dragon Naturally Speaking?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

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"

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etchak
Contributor
Contributor

For Dragon you need lot of memory and a good performing processor.

I think it will work but...my choice will be Boot Camp.

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theb3freak
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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rkowal
Contributor
Contributor

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

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theb3freak
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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vinayv
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

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.

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bbarranco
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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gogoshire
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

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.

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dkwehe
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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bbarranco
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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sokolovss
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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dkwehe
Contributor
Contributor

Sokolovss:

Outstanding response. It sounds like you have a working version using

Fusion 1.1 and 10.5.1? You are using Leopard?

dkw

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sokolovss
Contributor
Contributor

Yes to all.

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MandarMS
Expert
Expert

can you Try this DNS KB artical

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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

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.

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jkilpatrickmd
Contributor
Contributor

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?

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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

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?

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jkilpatrickmd
Contributor
Contributor

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

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