My Mother's Birthday Gift by Pam McGarry

I wanted to get my mother something she would really like for her birthday this year. Since she has been working on this blog, I thought that Dragon Dictate would be great for her. We have used it at several places I have worked to help staff members keep up with their documentation. It has worked well for them, so I thought that it was worth a try for my mother.I started an Internet search to find out more about the choices and prices of the software. I quickly became overwhelmed with the number of options and prices, so I found Dragon's official website www.nuance.com and started my search there. A chat box popped up, which I love. It is so helpful and easy to chat on-line with a sales or customer service person about products. The person I was chatting with helped me to narrow down my choices and then offered me an opportunity to speak with a sales person who could call me right away. We talked and determined that Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.5 Premium with a Bluetooth Microphone was the best choice. Since I was buying it from the company, it came with a 30 day money back guarantee and 90 days of tech support. I bought a training video also that I thought would help my mother. There wasn't any tax on an order shipped from out-of-state to where we live in Pennsylvania, so I used that savings to pay for expedited shipping. I ordered on Friday night and had it on Tuesday.
It loaded easily and I walked through the set up that included training the software to recognize my voice and now I'm pretty much off and running. There are prompts down the right side of the screen, similar to what Quick Books offers, to help me know what to say and do. The prompts change if I'm in email or Word or Excel. It is really something.
My mother is watching the video and me learn how to use it and is ready to get going with it on her own today (less than a week after it arrived). We had purchased IBM via voice more than a decade ago. I remember paying $149 to $179 for it and really never used it. I couldn't get it trained to my voice, which I now know had to do with the poor quality microphone that came with the program, but as a graduate student and county case worker, it didn't dawn on me that I needed to spend even more money to get software to work for me. My total cost for this software, video and expedited shipping with 30 day money back guarantee and 90 days of free tech support $353.92. I'm thrilled. Something that works and is helpful. We love this product and highly recommend it.
Of course we started looking into the stock prices and how the company is doing. Barchart shows this stock as a BUY. www.barchart.com

NUAN (Common Stock)
Exchange	NASDAQ GS (US Dollar)
Price	$25.96
Change (%)	0.16 (0.62%)
Volume	593,351
Today's Open	$25.77
Previous Close	$25.80
Intraday High	$26.01
Intraday Low	$25.74
52 Week High	$26.97
52 Week Low	$15.56
Data as of 11/14/11 11:22 a.m. ET Minimum 20 minute delay Refresh quote