PT Microsoft today will begin shipping the first test version of the latest release of its Office desktop productivity suite. Microsoft Office dominates the desktop application market, which includes Lotus Development's Smart Suite and Corel's WordPerfect. Sun Microsystems also offers StarOffice, a Linux-based productivity suite that can be downloaded for free. Office 10 includes speech-recognition technology that allows people to correct and edit Word documents while dictating to the computer, Office product manager Lisa Gurry said.
Users can also give oral commands while typing a document.
Gurry said the speech-recognition technology marks the first time the company has included such a feature in its products. The newest version of Office also includes Smart Tags, which pop up on screen while people access or enter data. The tags will give people choices to automatically correct, number or format the data they are working on. Smart Tags also can help users access information from the Web or other Office applications. For example, if someone types a contact's name in Word, a Smart Tag will appear and provide the option to automatically insert the contact's address from Outlook.