The latest NaturallySpeaking speech-recognition system is the first offering from Dragon Systems to let users surf the Web using voice commands. Alan Dixon reports on this and other advances Dragon Systems' NaturallySpeaking version 4 speech-recognition system has a series of new features, including the ability to surf the Web by voice, and the time needed to train the system to recognise a voice has been reduced. Installation is accomplished with InstallShield.
New wizards make installation straightforward for standalone users.
Although more expensive, NaturallySpeaking leads the pack with its large active vocabulary and polished interface. On a 300MHz system with 64MB RAM, IT Week Labs initial training was completed in about seven minutes, including three minutes processing the recorded speech. While recognition was acceptable with seven minutes, the accuracy only approached the quoted 95 percent after further training. One of the main advantages of Professional over Preferred is the macro ability. This allows sophisticated voice integration into other products and will be of value to bespoke designers and resellers.