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IBM ViaVoice Pro 8.0
 
 

IBM ViaVoice Pro 8.0

by IBM
Platform:   Windows NT / 98 / 2000 / Me / 95
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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2 new from £47.95

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System Requirements

  • Platform:   Windows NT / 98 / 2000 / Me / 95
  • Media: CD-ROM
  • Item Quantity: 1
 See more system requirements

Product Features

  • Talk normally to your Pc and your words appear on the screen
  • Create reprots, letters, E-mail documents fast
  • Command your Pc and navigate the web
  • Includes headset microphone
  • Customized Voice Marks
  • Advanced Acoustic Model

Product details

  • Delivery Destinations: Visit the Delivery Destinations Help page to see where this item can be delivered.
  • ASIN: B00004ZBYF
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 6,001 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

    Popular in these categories:

    #35 in  Software > Business & Office > Communication > Voice Recognition
    #35 in  Software > Home Computing > Utilities > Voice Recognition

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

ViaVoice for Windows Release 8 is available in two versions, Standard and Pro, with the Pro version sporting more bells and whistles and costing more. ViaVoice has now sprouted the "for Windows" name extension because IBM has also introduced versions for both the Linux and Macintosh platforms.

Just like its rivals, ViaVoice is a snap to install: you will need a moderately well-specified PC to get the best of it; a 300MHz Pentium plus 64MB-96MB of RAM is recommended, though more won't hurt! Although ViaVoice runs sweetly on all flavours of Windows, the Pro version has some issues with Windows Me and as a result a 600MHz Pentium III processor is recommended. Installation is a snap: you plug in the headset, adjust the sound levels and read out a script to train ViaVoice. This takes a mere five minutes or so, a far cry from when training took anything up to one hour. More training is a good idea but you'll be likely to experience really excellent recognition accuracies from the word go: when reading out business-style letters and reports, you can expect to get as many as 96 words out of 100 right, which is remarkable. Correcting mistakes remains a simple task, made a lot easier by the playback of what you actually said. The product has been extensively localised for the UK market and so will recognise place names, such as Merthyr Tydfil (which isn't even English!).

The Pro version is dearer than the Standard and the price premium buys you extras, such as natural language control of Excel and Outlook, as well as Word. You can also surf the web, using voice to control Internet Explorer. It is a tough call to say which is better, ViaVoice 8 or NaturallySpeaking 5 but on balance, ViaVoice wins by a whisker. --Roger Gann



Manufacturer's Description

Take control of your valuable time and resources. Boost your productivity by using the easiest, fastest, most natural tool available to interact with your computer - your own voice. Command, control and navigate your desktop, applications, and the Internet.Speak directly to the most popular Windows applications using natural, continuous speech. Create personal, voice-activated shortcuts to meet your specific needs. ViaVoice Pro is always learning how you talk, so recognition improves every time you use it. ViaVoice Pro's intuitive interface and Natural Language Commands can make working with your PC more productive than you ever thought possible. Simply speak into Microsoft Word, or most other popular text applications, and watch the words appear on your screen.Navigate, edit, and format in applications like Microsoft Outlook. Develop spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel and import them into documents or presentations - all by speaking to your computer. Create VoiceText dictation macros for frequently used text like addresses, or activate existing Word macros using only your voice. Produce voice-activated templates for boilerplate forms like letterheads.

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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Requires patience but good, 19 Nov 2000
By Alan Smyth (Tengiz, Kazakhstan) - See all my reviews
After the initial novelty of using a microphone for your input device you need to be patient with the program. You should complete all the exercises at the beginning of the program. When I started I was only obtain 80 per cent accuracy, after one day of practice I was up to 95-98 per cent accuracy. I created some exercises for myself. I would write a paragraph that I would regularly use in work or leisure writing. I would then correct the mistakes in this paragraph using the correction feature of the program. Then I would repeat the paragraph again correcting any mistakes. I would keep this up until I get a hundred percent accuracy in the paragraph. This sounds a bit tedious but you got a great sense of accomplishment when you achieved 100 percent accuracy.

Initially the speed of dictation was a little bit faster than my typing but having to go back and make the corrections made much slower. In fact it would take it 2 to 3 times longer than if I had just typed it. However overtime as the program made less mistakes my speed increased and after only three days I now find my speed of dictation with corrections is fast as my typing. I can also see it will get much faster as the program recognises my diction better.

I would recommend this program to allow anyone who is not a 60 words a minute typist and who has the patience to keep correcting the program in its initial stage.

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth the money, 18 Sep 2001
Once you've got used to which aspects work well and which don't it's a GREAT time saver, and has really helped the pain i used to get in my back and shoulders from typing so much. I just use it for text processing in MS Word and i'd recommend it to anyone for that. It doesn't, however, correct things very well and could do with a better interface for options and homophones e.g. 'root' and 'route'. This can be frustrating and if it doesn't get it right first time then i just type it in myself.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Nearly There, 8 Nov 2001
This review will be of interest to two groups of people: those using Windows 2000, and those who have to enter a large amount of data into spreadsheets, such as accountants.

The bad news for those using Windows 2000 is that while the program works very well with Office 2000, most of the menu commands are not available, and the sooner a patch is provided by I B M the better.

The good news for people who work with Excel is that this program delivers on its promise to permit easy working with spreadsheets. Without a training session on numbers, ViaVoice effortlessly allows dictation into cells, and the ability to edit them with the help of the mouse pointer. I estimate that I can transfer a marked up bank statement into Excel in about two-thirds of the time it took me to carry out this tedious chore manually. Best of all, I didn't have sore hands from pounding the keypad. I recommend a purchase: this program is excellent value.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible
Give this baby a bit of traing the you might as well sell your keyboard. Completed a 10 page essay in 30 minutes with 95% accuracy. Read more
Published on 7 April 2001

3.0 out of 5 stars Still far to go
Technology that lets you control your computer with your voice instead of a keyboard is highly interesting. VoicePro 8. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2000

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