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Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 12 is a speech recognition program. This software allows you to use your voice to control many programs on your computer, as well as dictate in such programs as Microsoft office and Gmail. Using the software, for such things as writing research papers, has drastically increased my productivity. All I have to do is say what I'm thinking, and it appears on the screen. If you are a person who has difficulty typing or even spelling, you will find this product to be an essential tool. Before purchasing Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 12, I attempted to use the speech recognition program included in Windows 7. I found myself repeating commands over and over, until I eventually gave up and began typing. Another problem that I had was remembering the commands. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, there is a convenient sidebar with various commands that you can use to navigate around your computer. When dictating, it also gives you a list of different commands that you can use to operate the system. In Microsoft Word 2010, you can do almost any operation with the sound of your voice: you can move the mouse, access tabs, and perform any editing functions from your top toolbars. Upon first bringing the software home, and installing it on my computer, it seemed that I was going to have the same problem that I had with Windows 7 speech recognition program. Every time I attempted to dictate the only thing that Dragon would print across my screen were the words "him him him him him him him..." Also, I was getting a terrible feedback from the microphone. This frustrated me to no end. Before giving up on the software, and simply throwing it in the garbage, I decided it would be best to call technical support. One valuable tool that is included with your Dragon software is the technical support team. This is a service you can take advantage of, at no additional cost, for the first 90 days after you register your product. The service far exceeded my expectations. The person on the other end of the phone was polite, patient, and took the time to walk me through a number of commands to attempt to fix the problem. After we had exhausted all efforts to adjust the settings, with no solution being found, the technician advised me to try a USB headset instead of a line in microphone. Evidentially, my sound card was not compatible with the headset provided with the Dragon software. The technician informed me that the USB headset would bypass my soundcard altogether. His advice was accurate, and Dragon has worked flawlessly for me ever since. I think it's important to mention, for any of you considering buying Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 12, that I've used this software to write this review. I have made almost no corrections with the exception of when I got hung up and couldn't speak properly. It did take me a while to learn how to dictate to the computer as opposed to type, but now that I've got the hang of it, I'm more than happy with this product. In fact I find that I wonder how I got along before I had it. Once everything is configured properly, and you've trained Dragon to your voice (which takes about 4 min.), the software is very accurate. On the box Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 12 claims to have a 99% accuracy rate. After getting a few hiccups worked out, I would have to agree with that percentage rate. I would highly recommend this software to anyone who has difficulty typing, spelling, or wants to increase their productivity.