Voice recognition software

[LTF]

Having not really paid much attention to these in the past, believing them to be a crap and not particularly effective gimic, i'm not too clued up on them.

Are they still are tacky as they were a few years ago, or have things moved on?

I was asked to look into said software to be used with office xp for someone with arthritis that is keen to use one of these rather than typing as much as possible.

Anyone able to recommend the 'best'?

Cheers

 

[~YuckFou~]

I believe IBM Via Voice is best right now.
It takes a lot of teaching though.

 

[Will]

Not quite on topic, but Shoot can be used for voice recognition in games.

 

[Jonty]

Hi d0nk3h

It's been a fair while since I've read up on these, so I'm not too au fait with what's hot and what's not.

When I was purchasing such a package a couple of years ago, IBM's ViaVoice and Dragon Naturally Speaking were the two best packages available. Each had a variety of different editions, which were staggered so as to create a feature/price correlation. The high end editions allowed you to control your whole computer (Star Trek style, 'Computer, open Half-Life' etc) whereas the cheapest editions merely allowed word processing control.

In the end I went with IBM's package (purely on price, and the free headset, it has to be said). I don't use it much now, and I have to say I didn't use it much back then (as I could type faster than I could talk). However, for someone with arthritis, such a solution could be ideal.

Basically, you have to train the program to recognise your voice. The more you train, the better the program gets, although full training can take hours, even days, and it is quite boring (that said, you can just start using it straight away and achieve reasonable results). Thankfully the technology is getting better, so accents no longer screw things up as they did, although colds or sore throats can still (or so I believe) reduce the accuracy.

In short, the technology is improving, and for those unable to type at speed, it could offer a good alternative. Be sure to shop around and be careful to choose the right package for you. However, remember that it isn't prefect, far from it, and that companies have got into the bad habit of forcing people to buy upgrades year-on-year, rather tha providing free patches.

Sorry I can't be of more assistance

 

[~YuckFou~]

Originally posted by Jonty
remember that it isn't prefect

 

[LTF]

Cheers lads.

ViaVoice it is.