Tonight's presentation centered around Dragon Naturally Speaking ( the leading voice recognition software).  Voice recognition allows the computer user to talk into a microphone and have the computer convert the spoken work into text on the screen.

Rick pointed out that to be successful with Voice recognition you need to have at least the next two hardware requirements:

1. Plenty of RAM-- 64 MB minimum and the more the better
2. Powerful processor -- At least a Pentium 166-200 or greater (or Pentium equivalent)

A good sound and microphone are advisable as well. 

Rick typed in a paragraph of text that took 1 minute and 30+ seconds with at least 10 or more errors.  The same paragraph was "typed" in using the dictation software and the time was only 30 seconds.  So the dramatic savings in time should certainly be of interest to computer users.

There was also demonstrations of correcting and training the software to perform better in the future.

Thanks to Tedd Brumbaugh for compiling the following links for voice recognition:

Dragon Naturally Speaking
IBM Via Voice
21st Century Eloquence (voice recognition specialists)
Labtec boom microphones
ZD Net Review of voice recognition software
L&H Voice Express
CNET Review of voice recognition software
Free Speech 2000

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