Tell me about Microsoft Windows XP Speech Recognition

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I thought that perhaps, either for fun or to improve on my fairly dismal typing speed (somewhere between 35 & 70 over extended periods), I thought that I’d try using some speech recognition software. While I understand that I’d really be better off getting a professional (i.e. dedicated) piece of software, I’d rather not for the time being.

So, here are a few questions. Please keep it in mind that I’ve just woken up from a long midday nap and am having a hard time returning to full cognizance, so my quesions may likely seem silly.

  1. Windows help would make me think that there’s a speech recognition software bundled somewhere in XP already. I’ve looked for it, but can only find Text-to-speech. I presume that this is an option on the installation that I haven’t selected and I’ll need to run the install again to get it. Is this correct? Do I need a completely new program?

1a) For some quick laughs, I’d like to go back to the days of Soundblaster Parrot and have “Sam” read some files to me. I can’t, however, seem to find this mystical “Language bar” that is apparently required. Where is it hiding?

  1. How does this MS SR stack up against say DNS? Is it a waste of time to use the MS program?

  2. How fast could I expect to work with this SR program? As stated, I can keep 70 wpm up on occassion, but I tend to get distracted after long passages (30 min or so) and loose my train of thought. I read an interview with an author that said the directness of getting his thoughts from his brain to the page was enhanced, so I figured I’d give this a go.

3a) I understand that I’ll need to go back over whatever’s dictated to clean up errors, but will it be counter productive? That is, will the quality of the output be so poor that I should keep typing?

  1. Not a question, but I also figured that having to dictate would stop me from mumbling. I’ve been told I mumble a lot.

Anyone have experience with this program?

2

It’s something, so far as I know, that is bundled with Office XP or 2003: it’s one of the options you can install. For me, using Office 2003, I open up Word and go to ‘tools’ --> ‘speech’ and the language bar crops up automatically.

Despite extensive training, all it gives me is beatnik poetry so I can’t comment on how well it does. (Beyond ‘it sucks’.)

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Am tiping rite now using XP speetch rekognisyon. It worx reelly wel.