We really wanted to like IBM's ViaVoice.
It is, after all, the only game in town for continuous
dictation software on the Mac. Unfortunately, our experience
with the program was a rocky one.
Installation/Setup: The installation and setup
process, while time consuming, is well thought out.
A setup assistant walks you through all of the steps
right down to the proper placement of the headset and
microphone. The step by step instructions are simple
and clear, leaving little room for confusion. The bulk
of the setup process is spent dictating several screens
of text for ViaVoice to analyze. There are six excerpts
to choose from, some short and some longer. After you
have finished reading, ViaVoice sets out to analyze
your voice. Be forewarned that this process takes a
good stretch of time, especially if you have read more
than one excerpt. Reading several excerpts will help
improve accuracy. For our tests we read two excerpts,
one long and one short.
We tested ViaVoice on several Macs including a G3/266
PowerBook, a G3/233 iMac and a 9500 with a 500MHz G3
upgrade installed. ViaVoice definitely needs a lot of
processing power to stay happy. I would suggest 300MHz
as a minimum rather than IBM's recommended 233MHz. On
our souped up 9500/500MHz machine ViaVoice crunched
through dictation with a minimal lag getting words to
the screen.
Interface: ViaVoice's interface is definitely
one of it's strengths. It is readily apparent that a
lot of thought went into porting the product to the
Mac OS. From setup to daily use, ViaVoice feels like
a Mac program. The context sensitive "what can
I say" window nearly eliminates the need for a
printed manual. One complaint that other reviewers have
voiced is that dictation must take place within ViaVoice's
"SpeakPad" application. I don't find this
arrangement particularly annoying in and of itself.
ViaVoice lets you transfer you dictated text to several
applications, Netscape, Outlook Express, AppleWorks
etc. While these choices work well for me, they might
not for others. Point in case is the hack over at ResExcellence
site that lets you transfer dictated text to BBEdit.
Perhaps the next revision could incorporate a plugin
or applescript folder for supporting additional applications.
Usage - Claims & Reality: "You talk,
it types" is IBM's catch phrase for ViaVoice. The
key issue of course is how well the type matches your
speech. When reading text from a printed source, ViaVoice's
recognition hovered right around their 90% accuracy
estimate. See dictation below
for an example. While this arrangement makes it easy
to test the accuracy of the software, it is probably
not a common usage. We dictated several e-mail's and
letters for print and noticed a real hit in accuracy.
Some errors made sense, uncommon proper names for example,
others were less forgivable. Saying "gray day"
for example delivered "great eh," "grade
a" etc. through repeated (and highly articulated)
efforts at correction. Fortunately, correction can be
done with voice commands and the correction window ViaVoice
presents (shown below) usually contains the correct
word you are after.
The following two sections represent what I would consider
a "best case scenario" for ViaVoice in terms
of getting accurate results. I selected a block of printed
text (the first page from Roald Dahl's "Mathilda")
to read that was free of any obscure words.
ViaVoice
Dictation: It's a funny thing about mothers and
fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting
little blister you could ever imagine, this still
think that he or she is wonderful.
Some parents, farther. They become so blinded by adoration
to manage to convince themselves that child has
qualities of genius. Call
Well there's nothing in very wrong with all
this. It's the with the world. It is only when
the parents began telling us about the brilliance of
their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting,
" the message Basin! Are going to
be sick!"
Actual Text: It's a funny thing about mothers
and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting
little blister you could ever imagine, they still think
that he or she is wonderful.
Some parents go further. They become so blinded by
adoration they manage to convince themselves their child
has qualities of genius.
Well, there is nothing very wrong with all of this.
It's the way ofthe world. It is only when the
parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their
own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, "Bring
us a basin! We're going to be sick!"
Conclusions: ViaVoice is an impressive initial
stab at bringing continuous speech recognition to the
Mac and IBM should be commended on their quality port.
Unfortunately, under normal usage ViaVoice's accuracy
didn't live up to my expectations or IBM's claims. Hopefully
this will improve in future versions.
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ViaVoice
Dictation: It's a funny thing about mothers and
fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting
little blister you could ever imagine, this still
think that he or she is wonderful. 
(5 possible) 
