Hands-Free Computer Control – ViaVoice Millennium Professional from IBM – Evaluation
Erik Sherman
ViaVoice Millennium Professional
7.5
V 7
P 8
E 6
S 9
Requirements Win 95/98, 48MB of RAM, 310MB of hard disk space,
CD-ROM drive, Internet Explorer 4.0 SR2, 233MHz
Pentium
Price $179
Publisher IBM, 800-825-5263, www.software.ibm.com/speech
PROS Excellent sppech recognition that adapts as you use it
CONS Difficult to learn; requires a powerful PC
EVER WANT TO SIT BACK and simply tell your PC what to do? IBM’s ViaVoice Millennium is an impressive speech-recognition agent that can give you that power.
While available versions of ViaVoice Millennium range from a $60 Standard package to an $80 Web edition with commands for popular browsers, we tried the $179 Professional package, which adds voice control for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook as well as speech-to-text, Web-browsing, and Windows-command capabilities.
The new ViaVoice offers significant improvements. For instance, there’s a larger vocabulary than ever before (IBM claims up to 2 million words, disk space permitting), including updated vocabularies for business, online “chatter’s lingo,” and technology. You can also buy optional legal and medical dictionaries.
Most improved, however, was overall voice-recognition accuracy–we rarely had to correct dictation or commands. New features include ViaVoice Outloud, which can react your documents back to you and made our proofreading a breeze.
You pay for this functionality with the power you need to run it. On our 466MHz Pentium II-based PC with 64MB of RAM, for example, it took twice as long to open Word with ViaVoice than without it.
The program also has a relatively steep learning curve. Dictation was easy, but the rare corrections were time-consuming. In addition, navigation through text was awkward. Editing sped up when we replaced typing with dictation, but still used the mouse to navigate.
RATINGS
HOME OFFICE COMPUTING’S product scores are weighted averages of 1- to 10-point ratings for: Value (30 percent of total), Performance (30 percent of total), Ease of Use (20 percent of total), and Suitability for Home Office Use (20 percent of total).
KEY:
V = Value
P = Performance
E = Ease of use
S = Suitability for Home Office Use
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