ViaVoice for Macintosh OSX 3.0

ViaVoice for Macintosh OSX 3.0 Review

I've only had ViaVoice for about one week now, but I have a pretty good impression of it. At first, what I was using it, I thought that it wasn't doing very well. It was making a large number of mistakes, and I was spending a lot of time correcting them. However, IBM seems to have done a good job, since I find that I'm correcting the program less, even after just one week. I probably use it for about one hour a day. The interface is actually very good, and mostly shows that they did try to write a Mac program. What finally convinced me that this program was great, is a test that I did earlier tonight. I read several paragraphs, and then figured out just how fast I was dictating to the software. It turns out, that I've been dictating at 150 words per minute.

However, there are a couple things wrong with the program. At least a couple times a day when using it, SpeakPad just stops responding. And I have to save my work, and restart the program. Not deadly by any means, but rather annoying. I also find that the in line correction that ViaVoice uses can often screw up. Sometimes when I'm correcting it will start inserting text randomly or cutting out text randomly and I can't figure out a pattern, and it's obviously a bug. However, for the most part it works. I have a repetitive stress injury in my wrists, and even though I'm spending time correcting, I still think that I'm probably getting at least 70 words per minute, which is about how fast I can type. The speed of ViaVoice is not an issue, at least on my Cube. It's plenty fast enough to keep up with my dictation.

And just for your information, I dictated this review using ViaVoice, and there were six mistakes (that I noticed). =)

ViaVoice for Macintosh OSX 3.0 Overview

ViaVoice for Macintosh OS X Edition is a fully integrated voice recognition application for the Mac OS X platform. Built on IBM's series of continuous speech recognition developments for the Macintosh and designed to integrate with the new Mac OS X, users can dictate naturally into most text applications, easily launch and surf the Web, and navigate Apple's new Mac OS X--all by using their voice.

ViaVoice for Mac OS X is designed to take advantage of Mac OS X's Aqua interface. ViaVoice for Mac OS X sustains the Aqua look and feel throughout, including the new Command Center, redesigned Voice Center, SpeakPad, and preferences control. This latest version offers faster enrollment, allowing users to more quickly train the system to recognize their speech. ViaVoice's Outloud Text-to-Speech technology in U.S. and U.K. English allows users to listen to e-mail and other text documents that the computer reads out loud. An expandable, user-customizable, command-and-control feature allows you to speech-enable common tasks. ViaVoice for Mac OS X even features specialized vocabularies for computers, business and finance, "chatter's" jargon, and cuisine.

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 16, 2010 06:22:03