So the other day I sang the praises of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred voice recognition software saying that it was the best thing since sliced bread ... then yesterday I had a catastrophe with it. I took the laptop upstairs to print out a few files (thank you Bill Gates: network printer cannot work any more and I blame the you personally!) And when I came back the software worked really badly, really slowly. Since I was in the middle of a panic to meet a deadline I became rather stressed. Luckily I was alone and no one was here to hear my expletives. I spent an hour and a half trying to find a way to make the software work again. I thought I'd found that the sound card driver had imploded so I uninstalled it; but when I came to reinstall it ... it has gone! So I went to the website to get a replacement driver: downloaded it, installed it... it seemed to work. Then it stopped working again. So I missed a deadline (fortunately not serious and have since met it) and had to go out to meet the fair Maria! After that teaching/learning session I got back home and tried the software. Again. I was desperate, thinking that I might need to return the software, throw something through a window all ... so I slept on it. This morning I started again and took a more rational view of things and by doing so I found the solution. It helps to plug in the headphones the right way round. I should say no more, otherwise it would be embarrassing for me. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred is excellent and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. DW