Let us start off by saying that we are Nuance certified resellers of NaturallySpeaking ~ http://www.knowbrainer.com/ShopOnline/index.cfm/ca... so you may want to take our recommendations with a grain of salt. Having made that disclaimer...

The Street price on DNS Pro is about $645 while the average price on DNS Preferred looks to be about 4 times lower so we can appreciate your dilemma. However, DNS Pro is designed for professional use and this is a work tool. We're not saying that you couldn't get by with DNS Preferred but it would be somewhat equivalent to putting bicycle tires on a sports car. DNS Pro brings a lot of additional features to the table with one of them being the ability to play back a recording of your dictation. Although this feature is also built into DNS Preferred, only DNS Pro will allow you to embed a recording permanently into a document for future use. You simply don't have the time to proofread your dictation in a courtroom. In our opinion, the playback ability is an absolute must. In DNS Preferred, you can only temporarily play back a recording from that session and even then there are limitations. With DNS Pro, you can playback the embedded wav file (recording of your voice) days or even months later.

You didn't ask but you mentioned using an old Sony. You'll be able to obtain higher accuracy if you can dictate within the courtroom onto a notebook computer as opposed to a digital recorder but if you decide to go the digital recorder route, we recommend choosing one that features the new DS2 algorithms because we found those to be the most accurate when used with NaturallySpeaking. Current recorders that include DS2 algorithms (in order of our preference) are the Olympus DS-5000, Philips 9600, Grundig 420, Olympus DS-3400 and the Olympus DS-2400.

Whatever you choose to go with, our last recommendation would be to purchase your NaturallySpeaking software and speech recognition peripherals (microphones, recorders etc.) from a Nuance certified/licensed vendor for an extra layer of technical support because it's all tied together.

Lunis - Nuance NaturallySpeaking Gold Certified BBB Accredited Speech Recognition/Microphone Solutions Provider

I'm afraid Teresa may be referring to an old Sony tape recorder. I know because I once used one. Teresa, the Dragon you choose will depend on the CAT software you will use (or not). I have been using Dragon for court reporting for a long time. All the CAT vendors require DNS Professional except Eclipse Vox. If you want to use Dragon as a stand alone product, Preferred should be plenty to get you started. I use Pro and recommend Pro but Preferred is a nice first step. I actually teach court reporters how to use Dragon.
CAT programs really make a court reporter's life so much easier but I do know court reporters that start out using Dragon in Word or Word Perfect.
Hope this helps,
Dessa