Dear DJ898,
As a user of Dragon NaturallySpeaking since the year 2000 I have come across a few versions in my time. I saw the advertisement for the "special edition" and noticing this was only being advertised in the UK I decided to check with a friend of mine from nuance and he told me that this was a "special edition" simply because it was a pre-release of version 9 preferred the same way they have pre-released version 10 preferred as a "special edition". So you need not look for the special editions anymore as they are just a pre-released version of the preferreds. Hopefully this has helped to to understand the special editions. As far as the basics or "standard editions" those are just the basic dictionary with almost no forgiveness, so you must enunciate your words extremely well. The preferred version allows one to make quite a few errors in their pronunciations and still get away with it. I noticed that this was posted in 2007 so you have probably settled on something already. Whatever you have settled on I hope it is preferred and whatever you upgrade to in the future if you do I hope that will be preferred as well as that is the most forgiving not only for us regular Joe's but for people with speech impediments as well. I do hope this has helped you out somewhat.
Cheers, John