Has anyone used Dragon's Naturally Speaking Software using Parallels and NT? I'd like to know if there are any problems before I splurge.
there are issues about microphones i have not bothered to experiment because these days I type faster than when I got Dragon NS on my Sony Vaio Possibly worked OK using a usb digi recorder then playing back for speech recognition later ????? just search the Forums Hugh W
It works very well once you get it to recognize your microphone. Make sure you have a USB mic that is on the Dragon approved list, then set it as the input in MacOS before you fire up Parallels.
DNS experience The ONLY thing that I use windows for is DNS Professional Medical version. I use it to dictate into a electronic version of people's medical records over a Citrix connection. Performance maximized a few versions back. Now, longer delays waiting for word recognition and there are times when the programs just seems to skip every sixth word. Nuance states that they are surprised it works at all. Several requests with custumer support have failed to turn up anything that improves performace. The installation acts at times, as though I was working on the old dumb terminals on a large network. Your speech goes into a 'buffer' where the sounds are stored and then interpreted. Unfortuantely, it acts like it is constantly 'polling' OSX to see if that OS needs attention. Result is more mistakes and occationaly frustrating refusals to learn. Still it is MUCH better than than the alternatives - manual input or buying a PC to run one program.
DNS experience The ONLY thing that I use windows for is DNS Professional Medical version. I use it to dictate into a electronic version of people's medical records over a Citrix connection. Performance maximized a few versions back. Now, longer delays waiting for word recognition and there are times when the programs just seems to skip every sixth word. Nuance states that they are surprised it works at all. Several requests with custumer support have failed to turn up anything that improves performace. The installation acts at times, as though I was working on the old dumb terminals on a large network. Your speech goes into a 'buffer' where the sounds are stored and then interpreted. Unfortuantely, it acts like it is constantly 'polling' OSX to see if that OS needs attention. Result is more mistakes and occationaly frustrating refusals to learn. Still it is MUCH better than than the alternatives - manual input or buying a PC to run one program.
Yes, Dragon NaturallySpeaking can run under Parallels on a Mac, but there are a few important considerations. Performance: Dragon tends to perform best on a native Windows installation. Running it through Parallels can introduce some lag or occasional recognition errors, especially with long dictation sessions. Audio input: Make sure you configure your microphone correctly. USB headsets generally work better than built-in microphones when using virtualization. Version compatibility: Check that the version of Dragon you plan to use is fully supported on the Windows version running inside Parallels. Some older versions may have issues with certain Windows releases. System resources: Running both Parallels and Dragon simultaneously requires sufficient CPU and RAM. A more powerful Mac will handle it more smoothly. Do use Dragon in this setup successfully, but if you rely heavily on dictation for professional work, performance may not match a native Windows machine. If possible, test it in your Parallels environment before purchasing to ensure it meets your needs.
This sounds less like a Dragon Naturally Speaking issue and more like a conflict between Dragon's mouse-control commands and the way Parallels handles cursor integration through Smart Mouse and Coherence Mode. What caught my attention is that Dragon is clearly moving the cursor--you can confirm that because clicks occur in the correct location--but the visual pointer isn't updating on screen. That suggests the cursor position maintained by the Windows VM and the cursor being displayed by Parallels have become out of sync. I've encountered similar reports involving virtualization software where accessibility tools, remote desktop software, or screen-overlay utilities interact with a virtualized mouse driver. In many cases, disabling advanced mouse integration features temporarily restores proper cursor tracking, which seems consistent with your observation that turning off Smart Mouse makes the pointer visible again. If I were troubleshooting this, I would test the issue in standard windowed mode rather than Coherence Mode, verify that the latest Parallels Tools are installed, and check whether the behavior changes with different Dragon mouse commands. That would help determine whether the problem is specific to Coherence Mode's cursor rendering. Based on the evidence you've provided, I would lean toward this being a Parallels integration issue rather than a speech-recognition problem. Since Dragon is successfully executing the commands, the missing visual feedback appears to be occurring after the cursor movement is processed. You may have better luck searching Parallels forums or contacting Parallels support, as other users running accessibility software inside Windows virtual machines may have encountered the same cursor synchronization problem.
