Nuance PowerMic III Microphone for Dragon Dictation Software - 3ft USB Cord, Voice Control for PC, Hands-Free Document Dictation - Perfect for Office Work, Transcription & Voice Commands

I bought this microphone about a year ago. I have experienced every frustration that a human being can endure with microphones for Dragon in the some 20 years I have struggling to enter the voice-to-text paradise. This is about as good as they get. I have a condenser now that is better. I want to apeople to price. There is a Fifine microphone Fifine microphone on sale here for 59.95 that comes with a stand that is every bit as good as thisI am adding this. If you listen to Vladímir Putin (have patience now) in this disgusting “help” of Ukraine. ( my history with this subject goes back to the 1970s but that’s another matter. ) You can compare Dragon advertising (five star) and it’s truth in advertising and support (two stars) to the invasion of Ukraine to Dragon advertising and its explanation of the murder picnic to the Russian people’s knowledge about Ukraine to the Customer Service involvement. Everything is hyperbole. Everything is the miracles that every bit of American advertising depends on. Life in America has a solution for your frustrations right around the corner and it will soon be available on Amazon.I quote from the opening of the description of the product right here on the Amazon website: “Achieve new levels of dictation speed, ease-of-use and productivity. For professionals such as police officers, doctors, lawyers, insurance adjusters, social service workers or anyone who is tasked with high levels of dictation or often works away from the office, Nuance PowerMic III is ideal.” I can’t say this is a lie. It’s become the way of the world to distort, to put it mildly, what you have to cure the ills of the world. I am something of an expert on Dragon. I’m not sure it was even called Dragon then—it was when the company operated out of a little store in Beverley (sp?), Massachusetts. It would’ve been Dragon 2.1 or something. The deception started because nothing but the IBM stand-alone computer had enough power to operate it. They knew that. But! Like Amazon hawking face identification to the police departments, it was using the public as free testing grounds. Everything in the opening two sentences above is the word I have come up with to describe the rhetorical devices used to swell the latest technological piece of equipment to make your life better. The word is lieth. Half lie but based on truth somewhere. Some frustrations. 1) I used to pay $99 for the DVD and could put it in as many machines of mine that I wanted; now, if you pay the$500 they want, they make it so god-damn difficult to get the promised usage fulfilled, you’ll go nuts trying to get it done. Then the accuracy thing. It depends on what you’re talking about. Try this: “Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” Extreme you may say. OK. Fair enough. Not everyone who uses Dragon is trying to justify a war—not easy. But I am a writer. I don’t expect miracles. But yesterday, I spent 3 hours using five different microphones and four computers ( one virtually new) to try to get this book moving along. I used to have a secretary, so I never had to try to make a fair copy of a book using voice before. It seemed like a wonderful solution. Yesterday result: About 100 words or about one word every two minutes. This whole technology thing is ultimately a big rip off. If you’re writing two-sentence memos using two syllables of less per word, it is indeed a miracle. And although I am 80% paralyzed ( so I can relate), some people can’t type etc. so it’s a great help for them. However, it is dismayingly hyped. It needs better everything. Every Dragon, etc., microphone, headphones should be rated by people who are like me and able to do a completely independent evaluation. For example: a scale of one to ten as to how well, how quickly, and with what equipment you are using to produce a 95% error rate dictating the Get a burger as dressed. Scratch that. The Gettysburg Address.I'm dictating this review with the PowerMic. While sometimes it messes up words, this is not an ordinary occurrence. When it does, you need to correct the mistake using the Dragon software, or else it will not learn from it. The really nice thing about Dragon is that it adapts to your speaking style rather than you having to adapt to it as with other speech recognition platforms, such as Apple's Siri or Google Assistant. Of course, this makes sense as you are paying a premium price for the software and this hardware to go with it. Overall, I think that this is a terrific deal for the price and will significantly affect your productivity with Dragon.One of the nice features that I like is that the record button is a push to talk by default, but this can be changed if you want to (some people might not like having to hold down the button while they are dictating, but for me, it is a good thing. I like to say things spontaneously while dictating that I do not want in the document).Another thing that I like is the ability to pick up spoken words even at a very low volume and with lots of background noise. I have dictated in the hot desk area of a WeWork, and people around me could not tell what was going on, but the PowerMic worked just fine. Compare this with a regular USB headset, and Dragon picked up words that I did not say, and the software was practically useless.There are also several configurable buttons on this device that can control various functions of Dragon software. For example, I have one set to train new words if I find that a word that I need is not in Dragon's vocabulary. When you're first getting started with the software, this will frequently happen with words specific to your profession or products of your company. As you go on with the software, you will notice its accuracy dramatically increases with every use. At this point, I can't imagine writing without Dragon and have only had this product for approximately a month.I purchased the PowerMic III to dictate into the Dragon Medical One Citrix-based software suite for our Epic electronic medical record. I would say that the dictation quality is excellent. It is an expensive tool/toy, however, it is worth it if you are using it all day to dictate patient encounters. The build quality is pretty good and the buttons have a good tactile feel. The microphone sensitivity is just right. The "press to talk" feature is worth the high price - you can dictate in the room with noisy patients (in pediatrics) and still get accurate speech recognition. This tool is far better than the Nuance PowerMic Mobile software that you can use on your smartphone, IMHO, if you are only using one laptop or workstation to dictate all your notes.I purchased the PowerMic III with the 9 foot cord. The cord quality is good, but you need to know how to manage your cable to keep it out of the way and untwisted. I ended up purchasing a short coil cord replacement here on Amazon for better convenience for my mobile laptop workstation.My only complaint is that I do not have full button functionality and customizability right now with the Dragon Medical One software system. I have called customer service and they affirm that this is a glitch right now. I can only customize 6 out of the 13 buttons available. I wish I could use all the buttons.What you cannot see in the website picture is a button on the underside of the PowerMic III for your pointer finger. This defaults to a left-mouse click. It would be great to customize this button as well, or inactivate it, as it could be easy to unintentionally push if you keep your finger there.The Nuance help desk is pretty helpful. They helped me figure out how to get the Citrix drivers onto my laptop and working in order to get the Nuance PowerMic III to work with my system. It was not just plug and play - but the help desk was good.I would purchase this again if I needed to. Or ideally, have your practice buy it for you!I use voice dictation because I am disabled.I got this microphone because it is recommended by Nuance, who produced the excellent DragonDictate voice dictation software. The microphone is almost certainly a very good microphone, but it needs to be held between one and 3 inches to the side of your mouth. It also has some buttons which enable you to use it as a mouse, but how you are supposed to use these while holding it next to your mouth, particularly if your hands don't work very well, is a real puzzle.So I sent the Nuance microphone back, and purchased a £25 desktop microphone which works perfectly well and is much more suited to my needs. Hopefully this review will save some people £185!After spending hours and hours being shunted from pillar to post on the telephone, I finally learned that my PowerMic III is no longer under warranty because I bought it from North America in spite of the warranty being listed as two years on the Internet. I was told this Internet information only applies to Great Britain. I was also told it would cost me over $200 just to get this PowerMic III fixed! I am disappointed and angry as I feel Nuance is using bait and switch techniques. I do not believe Nuance products should be listed on Amazon.The mouse is difficult to use and it wasn't any better then my Philips Speechmike. I liked my Philips LFH3500 or my Philips LFH3510. The trackball models are easier to move the mouse. Trackpad mouse is a nightmare. Horrible microphone. This company made it very difficult to return. They are based out of America and wanted me to ship back to California.Our hospital recently installed EPIC. Was using Dragon on my iPhone. Not very convenient. Bought the PowerMicIII. Works great. Convenient. Easy to install.good product and versitle