![]() Version 10.0 also makes it easy to navigate and control your PC and its applications with your voice. Of course, we tested ViaVoice on an 800MHz Pentium III system with 256MB of RAM. It also recognizes and implements commands more quickly. In our tests, ViaVoice 10.0 generally kept pace with our voice, and when it didn't, words appeared within a second at most. The lag between saying a word and seeing it on the screen is much shorter than in earlier editions. In addition to its improved accuracy, ViaVoice 10.0's dictation speeds have increased significantly. When we dictated the phrase "thousands of queries I receive annually" several times, it once came up with this howler: "thousands of Koreans received annually." Ouch. ViaVoice isn't perfect, of course-no speech-recognition program is-and its errors can rate high on the Unintentional Comedy meter. When we dictated with ViaVoice 10.0, our accuracy rate was higher than 96 percent. Kudos to IBM for pushing the accuracy envelope. This version's 4 percent boost means 10 fewer errors on an average page of dictated text. Although that number may seem high, remember that ViaVoice 9.0 performed impressively with an accuracy rate of 92 percent. In a short, 140-word letter, the program made just five mistakes. ViaVoice took dictation on our test jobs-business-style letters, news stories, and short memos-with a 96.5 percent accuracy rate. Thus, even with just the briefest training, ViaVoice 10.0's transcription abilities impressed us. Version 10.0's much improved speech engine significantly increases its speed and accuracy. Though its interface hasn't changed much, under the hood ViaVoice 10.0 has changed for the better. Version 10.0 adds some new tricks, too: it now supports digital recorders from Olympus and Sanyo, letting you talk into these recorders, then upload the audio file to your PC, where ViaVoice turns it into typed text. We had excellent luck here ViaVoice rarely failed to recognize a link.Īs before, ViaVoice includes text-to-speech skills that can read documents aloud in a robotic voice-handy when you want to hear a playback of what you've written or dictated. Within Internet Explorer (ViaVoice also supports Netscape and AOL 7.0's browsers), you can call up favorites, scroll through pages, navigate using Back and Forward commands and even "click" links by saying the first few words of the link. ViaVoice excels at navigating the Web through spoken commands. ViaVoice 10.0 also dictates into virtually any other Windows application. ViaVoice no habla español-or anything else but U.S. Try to dictate foreign words and phrases, however, and you'll end up with some odd translations. ViaVoice remains the best speech-recognition program for Word users. Within Word, you can use plain-English phrases, such as "select this paragraph" or "make this 12-point Arial bold" to maneuver through documents, make editing selections, format, and edit. SpeechPad, the basic writing tool that comes with ViaVoice, is adequate for short jobs, but to get the most from this application, we recommend using it with Microsoft Word 2000 or 2002. ViaVoice dictates directly into a host of apps in its Options settings, you determine the programs you want. ![]() We created one of these always-active macros to pop up any program's Help window whenever we said "show help." Impressive. This year, version 10.0 also lets you create voice macros-voice-activated shortcuts, in essence-that work with any Windows application that's installed on your machine. Like most consumer-priced voice-recognition applications, ViaVoice 10.0 offers the usual complement of tools and functions, including voice dictation, a text-to-speech engine, and voice-enabled applications control. But that's par for the course among speech-rec apps. ViaVoice's disk space appetite is as hearty as ever, too you'll still need half a gigabyte for this program-510MB in our test installations. There's only one new feature here: you may now opt to float the VoiceCenter rather than docking it to one of the screen edges, letting you position the VoiceCenter anywhere on the screen. This thin, toolbarlike strip features just one menu (to access the program's commands and options) and one button (to turn the microphone on or off). Since version 9.0, ViaVoice's interface, called VoiceCenter, hasn't changed. ViaVoice 10.0's VoiceCenter control bar can now be set in Floating mode so that you can drag it into position anywhere on the desktop.
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