Where To Get Help

Last Modified: November 23, 1999

If you have purchase Dragon NaturallySpeaking and are having some troubles with the product, then here are some resources that you can turn to. These resources were all available when this page was written, but sometimes resources disappear in the dynamic environment of the World Wide Web.

Dragon Systems Technical Support

You can write to Dragon Systems technical support for help by sending e-mail to support@dragonsys.com. Dragon has a technical support department which is dedicated to answering your queries via e-mail. However, the e-mail load is often very large, so it may take a couple of days for them to get back to.

Here are some tips which will help Dragon's technical support help you:

• If you have gotten previous communications from Dragon, then make sure you quote any correspondence which Dragon has sent to you in your message to Dragon.
• Make sure that you add your name and return e-mail address to your e-mail.
• If you cannot get Dragon NaturallySpeaking to run at all, then make sure the subject of your message indicates that Dragon NaturallySpeaking does not run and you are stuck.

Please do not contact me for technical support if you are having problems with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The technical support department is much more qualified to help with problems and answer common questions.

Dragon Systems' technical support department also runs a very popular discussion forum out of the Dragon Systems Web site. You can access the discussion page at http://dragon-support.dragonsys.com/support/discforum.nsf. This discussion group is frequented by Dragon Systems technical support personnel as well as many knowledgeable people, and is an excellent place to get advice or ask questions.

Mailing Lists

I know of three different mailing lists dedicated to either Dragon NaturallySpeaking or speech recognition in general. Some of these mailing list are very active, and they provide excellent places to get additional information about Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and to ask questions of other users.

If you sign up for a mailing list, then I recommend that you sign up for the digest form where you will only get one e-mail a day. Otherwise, you may find your mailbox full of e-mails posted on some of the more active mailing lists.

The Voice-Users mailing list is the oldest resource for users of speech recognition technology, and it is the most active. You can sign up for the mailing list at the following web address http://voicerecognition.com/voice-users/.

The VoiceGroup mailing list, hosted at onelist.com is another popular resource for users of speech recognition technology. You can register to receive updates to the VoiceGroup mailing list at http://www.onelist.com/community/VoiceGroup.

Finally, there is a new Natpython mailing list for users of my NatLink Python extensions for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. At the time that this page was written, there was not much activity on this mailing list. But it is a good place to get NatLink questions answered. You can register to receive updates to the Natpython mailing list at http://harvee.billerica.ma.us/mailman/listinfo/natpython.

News Groups

The most applicable news group for users of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is comp.speech.users. This group is dedicated to discussions about the use of speech recognition (as opposed to other comp.speech news groups which tend to have a more research focus).

This web page (http://www.synapseadaptive.com/joel/WhereToGetHelp.html) was last modified on November 23, 1999. The contents of this page are (c) Copyright 1998-1999 by Joel Gould. All Rights Reserved. See Copyright Information for more details.