VIA VOICE FOR WINDOWS PRO

It's important to distinguish between limitations of consumer computing power and the quality of dictation programs relative to each other. Voice dictation is extremely complex, and it is difficult to create truly reliable software without massive, NASA-level computers to run it on. With that in mind, ViaVoice 9 is an excellent dictation package, and the Pro U.S. bee (that should be USB) addition (edition) comes with the plant phonics Dee's pee 300 (uh, make that Plantronics DSP-300), a headset with outstanding microphone quality and fairly decent earphones.

Upon installation, the program asks you to read several paragraphs aloud to help it get to know your voice. The better "trained" ViaVoice is to your vocal nuances, the more adapted it is at translating your vocal commands and dictation. Unfortunately, even after hours of training, you can see it's still far from perfect, which is why I'm typing from this point on.

If you can get past its vocal follies, you'll appreciate the rest of ViaVoice 9's package. It's loaded with outstanding, user-friendly features, including its own dictation pad, a direct-dictate mode that works with just about every word processor you can think of, and the ability to format text and manipulate pull-down menus with intuitive vocal commands. It lets your voice perform other tasks, too, such as checking e-mail, surfing the Web, and using an applet called Voice Mouse to command the mouse cursor. In addition, ViaVoice packs the best help interface we've seen in years. For instance, for a list of vocal commands, you only have to utter the words "What can I say?"

Although its specs recommend differently, we suggest running ViaVoice on a machine equipped with a 1 GHz or faster processor and 256 MB or more RAM. Dictation was slow and error prone on our 1.5 GHz/256 MB test bed.

If you have a lot of patience, some spare time for extra proofreading, and the need or desire for a dictation suite, ViaVoice 9 is an excellent choice. Just be prepared for silly misinterpretations. --Joel Durham Jr.

Amazon.com Product Description
Designed for executives, professionals, and writers who place a premium on fast, effective computer communications, ViaVoice Pro USB Edition 9.0 comes with a stereo USB headset microphone with digital signal processor for higher speech recognition accuracy--the most advanced microphone ever included in a ViaVoice software product. Designed for speech recognition, this full-range stereo microphone is great for listening to MP3s, CDs, and DVDs, as well.

ViaVoice Professional Edition 9.0 gives you the best ViaVoice accuracy yet as you dictate, edit, and format text and numbers in popular productivity suites and applications such as Microsoft Office 97, 2000, and XP, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Netscape Messenger, and Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.5. Dictate, edit, and format text in SpeakPad, the ViaVoice speech-enabled word processor, or directly in Microsoft Word 2000 and 2002. Voice Marks monitors your macro commands as ViaVoice carries them out. With ViaVoice Documents, custom templates are ready for quick and easy creation of business and personal letters, faxes, and memos in Microsoft Word 97, 2000, and 2002.

Create customized voice shortcuts with the Navigation Macro Center, which allows you to cut down on keystrokes and mouse clicks. The Dynamic Web Navigation feature lets you surf Web sites using your voice in popular Internet applications, just by saying the first few words of a URL. Included is a group of specialized vocabulary topics for computers, business and finance, cuisine, and "chatter's" jargon. These can be switched on or off as a complement to the standard 160,000-word vocabulary. With the Text to Speech feature, ViaVoice can read back both your typed and dictated text, making editing your documents easier. An improved Analyze My Documents feature allows ViaVoice to recognize your writing style and the words you use frequently, leading to greater accuracy.

The accuracy of IBM Via Voice V 9 is better, but lacks featurs such as adjusting the microphone level found in Voice Xpress.

I see that version 10 of Via Voice is out as an upgrade (a change in the previous policy). I would have considered spending the $90 or so bucks to upgrade and get the mike control for background noise, but I never got my $75 rebate from IBM for purchasing Version 9 a year ago. You can get Voice Xpress V 4 (standard) with the Platronics DSP folding headset for the price of the Upgrade cost of Via Voice alone. A better way to go if you are on a budget.


The software update policy ...   September 30, 2002
P. M. Jacobsen (Birkerod, Denmark, Scandinavia)
16 out of 18 found this review helpful

This is not a review for this version, but a comment on IBM's update policy. I have an earlier version of ViaVoice, namely the Millenium Pro version, which I previously wrote a positive review about. However, if I want to update to the newest version I have to pay full price, since IBM only allows users who bought the previous version within a narrow, specified time period to get the upgrade price. Everyone else has to pay full price!
Not even Microsoft who has often, deserved or undeserved, been called predatory, has to my knowledge never had such a restrictive software upgrade policy towards end-users.
This is outrageous, and it certainly makes me want to look for alternatives!


SOME RECOGNITION, but HOURS of talking   June 16, 2002
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

This software can recognize voiced speech, but it takes several hours to configure it so that it doesn't make lots of mistakes.

For a person who has Arthritis of Carpel Tunnel this is a great program, but they likely will need to voice out commmands for several hours to ready the program for near errorless preformance.


Via Voice   June 5, 2002
Donald L. Peterson (Lapeer, MI United States)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Via Voice works on my Pentium 4 XP operating system.
It recognizes a large percentage of my speaking BUT not all and makes some amazing mistakes. It may get better with more training. It is not yet working well enough to use for full time work BUT works very well when my carpel tunnel kicks in. The computer responses well to my spoken commands. Not as quick as the mouse but when you can not move the mouse without pain it is the only way to get work done.


Excellent stuff   November 16, 2001
Angelo
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

Having read the above reviews I am astounded at the misfortune of the guy with 3 computers and the recommended specs given in the other review.
I have a bog-standard Compaq Presario 450mhz - 192mb RAM and have recently installed WinXP and - in a spate of idleness - Viavoice Release 9 along with the patch from the IBM website for WinXP compatibilty. The product works beautifully!!
Much better than Release 8 on Win98 (which already worked well). Recognition seems vastly improved and desktop navigation works splendidly (direct dictation into MS-DOS prompts is great fun).
I'd love to have a 1.4ghz with 256mb to try it on but given that my recognition accuracy is around 95% anyway I can't see what difference it would make.