If you are a regular visitor to geekanoids you will know that I have been using Windows Vista for the past few weeks. I thought it would be interesting to bring you a review using the new speech recognition feature of Microsoft's new operating system.
This short article has been dictated using the new feature, with a minimum amount of corrections necessary. It is very strange to be speaking to the computer instead of rattling away on a keyboard, so strange in fact that I am sitting here twiddling my thumbs, feeling as though I am not really working. It is also not very common for me to praise the windows environment, but with a small apology to all the Mac users reading this article, I must say that I am impressed.
The windows speech recognition feature takes you through an animated tutorial that guides you through the most common features, with some very nice examples. After this initial tutorial you are then given the option to complete some voice training, which promises to improve accuracy. I did this and so far I have only had to reach for the keyboard once during this article.
The gimmicky part of speech recognition, for me anyway, is navigating between applications and getting windows to save files without touching the keyboard. I guess this is because that when using the Mac OS things just seem so easy anyway, so why complicate things by trying to learn a new way of controlling the computer. It is probably because it feels so unnatural and after a while I am sure that horrible get used to it. There is an application called dragon naturallyspeaking available for the Mac that this has made me want to take a look at, I will try and bring you a review of that at a later date.
In summary this article has only now involved me touching my keyboard twice, so well done Microsoft you have gained a small percentage of my interest and I will keep revisiting your new OS in a hope that I can at least bring my readers the opportunity to try something different. Still have a Mac man, I won't be switching, but at least when using Vista I am smiling a little.