I'm testing Dragon Professional V16 right now.
So far, it's largely accurate on everyday language, even with a fan going in the background.
I tried a list of harder names: Eusebius, Marduk, Poseidon, Enkidu, Gilgamesh, Erasmus, Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, writers' sanctum, Persepolis, Ecclesiastes, Belshazzar, Osiris, Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Gandalf, Merlin, John Steinbeck, Antigone, Eteocles, Oedipus, Creon, Andromache, Galahad, Gawain
Out of all of those, I had to train Eusebius (started with you see BS and you Sebelius), Marduk (started as Marge Duke) and Gawain (started with Dewayne). Enkidu was lowercase initially. All the others came out right the first time, and once trained, came out right subsequently. (This is better than it used to do.)
Dragon can work with Word (through an addon which it installs during setup). That mode works really well if you're using a template with very specific formatting, for example. However, to train new words, you need to use the Dragon Bar. You can also use that for dictation (via Dragon Pad, which is basically WordPad designed to work with Dragon.
There is a weird glitch in which I asked to lowercase a word, and the whole paragraph turned into lower case. But then, I realized that "lowercase that" is no longer a supported command. "Capitalize that" worked as expected. Other formatting commands worked as expected.
There are movement commands, such as select X, which selects the word or phrase you specify. It's pretty easy to maneuver around.
--Dictated text:
Now, I'm going to try dictating into the forms comment box. This mode supports dictation, but it doesn't seem to support commands to select earlier words or phrases. Consequently, I couldn't correct forms to forum's. Sometimes, it's easier to just fix minor stuff like that later, anyway. This paragraph was completely dictated, and as you can see, that forms glitch is the only error. That was actually faster than typing, although it sometimes takes the second or two for the dictated text to appear.
What you can do with a particular application may depend upon how it's coded. In the case of the forum, Dragon accepts deletion commands but not selection commands. I had to correct accepts, but otherwise, I didn't have to make corrections. I did notice, however, that when dictating into forum, Dragon does not accept formatting commands, either, but that makes sense because the forum doesn't work like a word processor in that respect.
--End dictated text.
That would have been faster if I'd know how the forum's comment box and Dragon would interact, but the text itself required little correction.
At first glance, it does appear that Dragon has improved. Sometimes, it may need to be trained. Occasionally, it might even be better to just manually retype. I've noticed that in the past. But for the most part, experimental fumbling aside, It is faster than typing if one doesn't need to think too much about what to say next. Once I get used to the way it works, I imagine that I will be able to go even faster.
(Oops! I now see a couple of other errors. That's still pretty good. Also, Dragon recommends a headset microphone, but I wasn't using one.)
