Punctuation was tricky you need to say "period" at the end of a sentence. Programs would sometimes slow down or speed up, resulting in repetitions as well as missed words. While I was generally impressed with their ease of use, I had to be vigilant about the results. But before they would follow my orders, I had to teach them my speech patterns by reading several scripts that appeared onscreen. Each system started easily at the click of an icon.
I used them for everything from dictating e-mail to composing formal marketing pitches. I tried all three systems on notebooks and desktops running various versions of Windows XP's small-business edition.
Hoping to ease the strain, I recently tested the latest versions of three popular voice-recognition software packages: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 ($899), IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Edition, version 10 ($189.99), and the speech-recognition software included in the Ultimate version of Microsoft's new Vista operating system ($399). Several years ago I fell and permanently injured the nerves in my right hand, so too much keyboard time can literally cramp my style. But today's voice-activated software promises to do just that, claiming faster speeds and an impressive 99% accuracy level. While we all have one-sided conversations with our tech toys, we generally don't expect them to answer, much less complete tasks simply because we say so.
Don't believe me? I'm guessing that in the last week alone you've begged your PC not to lose valuable data or implored your notebook to recover lost documents. You can also return to the User Wizard for further training.(FSB Magazine) Brooklyn - Many business owners regularly talk to inanimate objects. Luckily, ViaVoice is designed to continue improving its speech-recognition vocabulary by analyzing the text errors that you correct. It recognized larger words, such as subscription, but fumbled with smaller parts of speech that people tend to mumble, such as prepositions and contractions. ViaVoice understood our straight dictation moderately well. Not surprisingly, ViaVoice also has lower memory requirements-about 750KB per minute for recorded speech, which is less than the 1.5MB of memory that Dragon requires. For example, you need to click the mouse to pause text as ViaVoice reads it back to you, and you can't use your voice to enter keyboard commands, as you can with Dragon. ViaVoice is a dictation program, however, not a hands-free app like Dragon. Nuance (formerly ScanSoft) now distributes both programs, which even share some voice commands, such as "Scratch that" (to erase text) and "Go to sleep" (to turn off the microphone). In some ways, ViaVoice 10 is a lightweight and less expensive version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8. ViaVoice 10 also comes in a Mac-ready version, which demands OS 10.3 and 192MB of RAM. You'll need an Internet connection and a 16-bit sound card as well. ViaVoice has moderate RAM requirements: 64MB for Windows 98 SE and Windows Me, and 192MB for Windows XP Home and Professional.