Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11 service pack one
My blood pressure is dropping slowly. The sweat on my brow is evaporating. My hands once again are getting steady. The fight or flight response is winding down. Why was I in such a fix? Isn’t it the same as always, a computer program upgrade. In the past 16 hours I have taken an excursion into the dark side. Less of course the 12 hours I spent with my wife and the time I was sleeping. That leaves four hours overall. Shall I tell you about my digital adventure? “Oh please do…” says the little voice in the back of my mind.
I was happily using Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11 since I loaded it up on my new computer. I’ve been having very few problems with it. In fact I was starting to use it quite a bit. Then yesterday, when I started up the program, I got a little window open up on my screen. The message was that there was a new service pack to upgrade my NaturallySpeaking version to 11.5. “Ah,” I said to myself. Everyone likes a free upgrade. So I clicked on the link and another helpful window opened up. Clicked on that link and started a half gig/18 min. download. After the download a 5 min. install. Everything went well or so it seemed.
The moment of truth, double-click the icon on the desktop, see the splash window, and a unasked for systems window pops up and tells me the program can’t run. It advises me to restart my computer. I shut down the system and then started it up again. Double-click the icon and got the same pop-up. The pop-up window gave me a second option. I can simply reinstall the program that I downloaded. So I went looking for this mythical program and could find no trace of it on my computer. I searched high, I searched low and opened a myriad of folders. Still no trace of its existence. Guess I will have to go to Nuance and get some help.
I step through the digital portal and entered their site. Sigh, I searched high, I searched low and traveled down every link. There was only one document that was supposed to be helpful. I read the document. I read it again. It told me of the advantages of upgrading my Dragon program. It said if I had problems that I should restart my computer. Well I knew that didn’t work. The other piece of advice? Just start up the Dragon program again and download the upgrade. Hmm… But I can’t restart the Dragon program. Perhaps I can download the update from their site. No such luck. The only way to get the update is to start Dragon, and Dragon won’t start because the update corrupted the program. After two hours I went to bed angry.
Next morning I tried again to start the Dragon program. No such luck. I went to the Nuance website once again. Still could not find any documentation that could help. Perhaps if I sent them an e-mail? Searched high and low and no go. No e-mail link was available. Went to support. Jumped through some hoops. Explained the problem, in detail. Pressed the submit button and I get a little window that tells me they are going to charge me. Let me get this right, I bought the program in April. Couldn’t work on my old computer because it did not have enough memory. Got a new computer in June (?) and eventually got everything running, including the Dragon program. Everything is going fine and then I get this update. The update crashes the program so that it will not run. And now they want me to spend $9.95 for them to fix the problem. A little bit of grinding of teeth (with all the grinding of teeth lately it is amazing that I have any teeth left). I give up in disgust.
The only thing left is to uninstall Dragon. I go to Control Panel and highlight the program and click uninstall. Fortunately I was able to save my own speech files. Now I have a blank. I grabbed the disk and reloaded Dragon once again. Jumped through the hoops and it is working. I get the same window pop-up telling me I need to upgrade to 11.5. With fingers crossed I clicked the link and begin the download. It installs. It works!
Time will only tell if I will have anymore problems with the Dragon program. I hope it is fixed once and for all. Why? Because I find that Nuance, the creators of many programs, to be very hard to deal with as time goes on. I find their site hard to navigate. And I learned for the first time that they are now going to start charging for support. That they do not have an e-mail so that I can write them with a complaint. Sometimes I think that Murphy’s Law applies whenever I and a computer come together. Perhaps other people who have done business with Nuance are happy with the products, the sales and the support that they get. Sadly, I simply get more disenchanted with Nuance the longer I deal with them. Is it time for me to make a vow? Never to do business with them again? So close, oh so close…
Ugh. This is why I completely unplug computers with problems and haul them over to Simon across the street. He fixes them. He even seems to like doing it.