You never thought owning your own company would feel so much like a secretarial job. The reams of documents you've typed in the past year could fill a warehouse. Your wrists ache, and your ears buzz from the clacking of your keyboard. But there's a solution—and it's much cheaper than hiring an assistant.
Say hello to speech recognition. Dictate and format documents—even control Windows—just by talking. But don't junk your keyboard. None of the four apps we tested—Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 4.0, Lernout & Hauspie Voice Xpress Professional 4.0, IBM ViaVoice Pro Millennium Edition, and Philips Free Speech 2000—lets you communicate with your PC by voice alone. Despite tight integration with Windows and many other applications, these speech programs still require mouse work to get your computer's full attention.
PC Computing Labs tested these speech packages. Our testers—all frequent users of Windows, Microsoft Office applications, and the Web—took each program through all the paces: setup, training, dictating, and document formatting, as well as controlling other apps and browsing the Web by voice.
Fast Talkers The most notable improvement over previous speech recognition efforts is a much shorter training period. Within 10 minutes of dictating into your PC for the first time, you can start creating documents, browsing the Web, and switching between programs just by telling your computer what to do. It's a great idea. After all, who has time to spend an hour or more with a program before getting down to business? But only two of the four packages we tested offer an acceptable level of accuracy after such a brief training period: Dragon Naturally Speaking (a pre release version) and Voice Xpress, our testers' overall favorites.
In spite of Voice Xpress's enticing extras—direct dictation into most Windows apps, a suite of voice-powered utilities called TalkingTools, and an option to use the software with a mobile recorder—Dragon NaturallySpeaking distinguished itself. Testers gave it high marks for dead-on accuracy (after a bit of extra training), easy navigation within documents, and a smart correction feature that clearly learns from its mistakes.
Like the others, Dragon NaturallySpeaking lets you dictate and format text directly in Word. But it's irksome that it forces you to start in its proprietary word processor rather than giving you a choice. The other three apps install a control bar at the top of the screen that shows the microphone's status and offers quick access to settings. While Dragon Naturally Speaking can dictate into programs besides Word—including Corel WordPerfect, Lotus Notes, and some Internet chat software—it doesn't give you control over Windows the way its three rivals do.
Master and Servant FreeSpeech, Voice Xpress, and ViaVoice (a beta version) all let you boss Windows around. Too bad Windows doesn't always listen. From the desktop, all three packages let you launch applications, explore directories, and access your Start menu. Testers had the best luck with ViaVoice and Voice Xpress: Both launched most applications in one try and let testers open folders just by speaking. You can navigate Windows with Free Speech too, but it doesn't let you drill through layers of folders as deeply.
Our testers liked being able to ask the software what commands work in a given context. All four applications offer this feature. In Via Voice, for example, you simply say, "What can I say?" and a context-sensitive command list appears. However, more than once, testers found that these supposedly tried-and-true commands did not work at all. You should be able to tell ViaVoice, "Surf the Web." But instead of launching Internet Explorer, ViaVoice just sits there.
Browsing the Web by voice was touch and go. All four programs quickly jumped between text links on Web pages. With Voice Xpress and ViaVoice, you can even open Favorites in Internet Explorer 5.0 (or Bookmarks in Netscape Navigator 4.5) and tell the browser which sites to visit. The other packages do the same within IE only. But testers found that spelling out a Web address was nearly impossible in all four.
Speech Shortcuts For most businesspeople, browsing the Web and controlling applications with your voice is a handy but unnecessary extra. You can probably get around Windows and the Net a lot faster using your mouse and keyboard anyway. But if you're a slow typist, or if you'd like to augment your assistant's ability to take dictation, speech programs are your secret weapon.
To save even more time, these packages often let you create your own verbal shortcuts, which means you don't have to repeat certain common phrases or blocks of information. For example, you can train Dragon Naturally Speaking and FreeSpeech to recognize "Joe's address" or "my phone number" as shortcuts that stand for the referenced information, which also ensures that a number or a tricky phrase is entered correctly every time.
Even if dictating to your PC is faster than typing, it's not going to save you time in the long run if the software can't correctly interpret what you say. Dragon Naturally Speaking gets our nod because it's simply the most accurate and the easiest to use. While none of the programs performed flawlessly after the first training, testers noted that Naturally Speaking seemed to learn the fastest. And like the other three programs we tested, Dragon Naturally Speaking will digest documents along the way to expand its vocabulary, which boosts accuracy even more.
Moving around inside a document proved to be most painless with Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's the only program that lets you say "Insert after [text]" to move the cursor before or after a certain word. The others make you count words or lines—"Move to 16th word," for example—a process so tedious it makes the mouse seem like a technological breakthrough.
The biggest problem with these apps is their failure to distinguish between dictation and commands. Free Speech gets around this by operating in three different modes—dictation, command, and spelling. But remembering to switch between the modes is a pain. And mode-less operation isn't that much better. In Voice Xpress and ViaVoice, testers had trouble getting the system to dif ferentiate between commands and dictation: Sometimes saying, "Go to end of document" resulted in the phrase being typed out; other times the cursor complied.
Testing 1, 2, 3 Beyond repeated use and extensive training, we found that a high-quality headset microphone also improved accuracy. Each package claims to include a good mike—FreeSpeech bundles Philips's SpeechMike, a handheld microphone and mouse combo. But we tested the apps with their standard microphones, as well as with a third-party product, Plantronics' excellent $30 SR1—call (800) 544-4660 for more information. The SR1 headset was easier to use and adjust, and the resulting speech transcription was more precise.
But hardware is only a small piece of the puzzle. For dead-on dictation accuracy, look to Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred 4.0. If you want to be able to tell Windows a thing or two, Lernout & Hauspie Voice Xpress Professional 4.0 is a great alternative.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 4.0
Rating Five Stars
Verdict When you speak, your PC will listen—even if no one else does.
Pros Top accuracy and usability; no-brainer correction; slick shortcuts.
Cons No control over Windows.
$199 est. street price / Dragon / (800) 437-2466
Lernout & Hauspie Voice Xpress Professional 4.0
Rating Four Stars
Verdict Accuracy lags slightly, but it controls Windows.
Pros Plays nice with Office 97 and 2000 apps; lots of extras.
Cons Sometimes can't distinguish between commands and dictation.
$150 est. street price / Lernout & Hauspie / (888) 537-6688
IBM ViaVoice Pro Millennium Edition
Rating Three Stars
Verdict Despite improvements, trails others in accuracy and usability.
Pros Smart wizards help you troubleshoot problems fast.
Cons Clunky correction feature will have you tearing out your hair.
$179 est. street price / IBM Speech Systems / (888) 411-1932
Philips FreeSpeech 2000
Rating Three Stars
Verdict Vastly improved.
Pros Shortcuts save time by storing frequently used phrases.
Cons Forces you to switch between command and dictation modes.
$149 est. street price / Philips Speech Processing / (888) 773-3244
