BMoran5055,
I've been using Dragon for quite a few years, started with ver 3 and I'm now using ver 7.3, it needs an upgrade from ver 7. I've heard ver 8 is better but I'll probably wait before upgrading. I ran into the problem of Hal automaticly inputing the text, sometimes before I finished and I like to check for errors. To solve this I turned off the mic in the Hal display, while still using dragon I can dictate into the input box, this allows me to check the sentence before inputing it into Hal.
Something I've found very helpful to help train dragon is a set of documents. I've created a list of documents by doing some dictation in the morning to help plan my day, it includes relatives, places I go ect, this is entered into the vocabulary builder, a great help to get dragon going. Also I'm using a Sennheiser Headset from Newegg.com.
Carl2