You guys are hammering away with questions faster than I can type answers... :-) Here is some more info, if I have missed anyone's question please email me again. I'm not carrying over who posted what, as I'm sure we're all more interested in more info than formalities. > > can it replace OCR by reading text to it? > > Probably, dunno whether you'll be better off though. > > well, if it can replace OCR at say equal quality, > then voice wins, because it can handle handwritten text Yes, true. It depends on what the text is too. If you read from the paper, voice should be faster. If you read a printed program listing, you'll have to read out all the cancer^H^H^H^H^H syntactic sugar of the language in question explicitly, which will slow things down a bit. As for whether VR is useful Martin, I'm willing to demonstrate to you what's possible at the moment, but I'm not willing to argue with you about whether you find it useful... :-) :-) To hardware spec. > I have a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking for Windows (hence the reason > I never get around to using it). Likewise. Same reason. > On a AMD 900MHz with 384MB RAM it did > OK - I'd speak a long sentence and it would process and spit it out > maybe 2-3 seconds later. I better refrain from expressing my considered opinion about Dragon in public when it comes to hardware specs. When they state "continuous" and "minimum specs", they forgot to state "mutually exclusive". Double it and you stand a chance, triple it if you prefer not to get annoyed all the time, seems to be more to the point. You want to run Dragon under vmware? HAHAhaahahaaaaaaaaaaaa...... On contrast, IBM's minimm specs appear to be accurate. IBM's recognition engine is a *lot* easier on hardware than Dragon, which makes me think it's better technology. Dragon is like M$ - thrash it out fast, doesn't have to be bug-free (nice to charge for updates anyway), and never mind about hardware, we're not paying for it, and as long as the home-loser gets a few words out of it with the cheap entry-level pack he'll be happy. The requirements for ViaVoice are (from http://www.ibm.com/software/speech/enterprise/collateral/dictationforlinux.pdf) ): * Processor: Pentium 233MHz or equivalent with MMX and 256KB L2 cache * RAM: 64MB That should be easy to beat. With current RAM prices the amount of memory required is a non-issue. I am running it on a PIII-450 with 376MB RAM, and I'm confident there is CPU and memory to spare. (Full performance tests later) With Dragon, better buy a computer less than 3 months old and switch to single tasking. > how easy it is to train the software to a New Zealand accent. It's very easy to train. 10 minutes initially and you're away. It keeps on learning while you use it. Each mistake you correct will be stored. You train for each voice model you create, you should create a new voice model for each new microphone and location you use. As for New Zealand, well I'll find out :-) I am toying with the idea of trying the UK version (also available are German and French). Non-US languages currently need to be installed in a fiddly way, it's on the todo. And it's a 200MB or so download for UK... I read recently that when Dragon came out with an Oz version, accuracy increased noticably for some people. That means it's speaker dependent. > Volker - where abouts did you buy the Mandrake Power Pack? Cost? LSL Australia, total NZ$150 incl shipping. They had a special. > We use the verbatim stereo headsets they're quite cheap (about $15 > wholesale) If you look after them they last a few years. Call them headphones... > Haven't yet tried to use the mic Ah! Well, if you want to record a sound clip for your gilrfriend/Aunt/etc in Europe, they'll do. Otherwise, make use of a pair of side-cutters to save yourself a lot of time. Just out of interest, I did the 10min initial training with one of those $8 desktop microphones. What a joke. It didn't recognise a single word! Then I noticed that the mic has side-openings facing the noisy fan in the switch right next to it on the shelf... Currently I am playing with the head set which was shipped with Dragon, but I am not seriously considering using it. > Voice recognition [...] not a replacement for a touch-typist Both Dragon and IBM claim that VR is still faster, even for typists. Of course, if your typing is anywhere near like mine, the choice is absolutely clear! Command & control applications are possible as well, they would work, but VV dictation for linux doesn't support much/any of it yet. Xvoice does, but xvoice doesn't support training. The M$ stuff is more advanced with its user interfaces. The Linux stuff is dirt cheap :-) Head sets. Not sure what to do yet. Need to ring around. It's of limited use to study American results for head sets not available in NZ. If someone comes across something good, please let me know!!! > The recommended specs on processor and ram were interesting > min 500 mhz and 256mb ram :-) Sounds like Dragon to me. For useful results, double the 500. Nuff said. > What all can you do with it? > Read in text? yes > Issue commands? no, not VV dictation. Try xvoice. > And is it using the ViaVoice engine or .....? yes (of course) Volker