Kurzweil Brings Voice Dictation to Windows

D.A.

People looking for a more ``hands-off'' approach to interacting with their PC running Windows should be able to pick from at least three voice dictation programs by the end of the year. Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (Waltham, MA, (617) 893-6525) has released Voice for Windows 1.0, a $995 program that lets you create text and control Windows applications by speaking into a microphone. At press time, at least two other companies were working on Windows speech-dictation programs: Dragon Systems (Newton, MA), which already has a dictation program for DOS, says it will release a Windows version this summer, while IBM is expected to release a Windows version of the company's Personal Dictation System this year.

Kurzweil's Voice for Windows lets you dictate speech at the rate of about 50 words a minute. You can also use the program to open and close files and perform operations like cutting and pasting. The program doesn't require training--you can use the program as soon as you install it--but you can improve the program's ability to recognize your spoken words in brief training sessions. While trying out Kurzweil Voice for Windows, I was able to dictate text at a rate of about one word per second, with one or two mistakes per paragraph.

The package includes Kurzweil's 16-bit, DSP-based (digital signal processor) sound board with a microphone. The company says future versions of the program will support DSP-based sound boards from third parties. Voice for Windows requires a 33-MHz, 486-class PC and 8 MB of dedicated RAM to support a 30,000-word active vocabulary (16 MB of RAM for the 60,000-word vocabulary). These are not minimal hardware requirements, but then voice dictation is not a lightweight application.

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Illustration: Kurzweil's Voice fo r Windows dictation program delivers a significant level of hands-off operation and should appeal to anyone with limited typing skills or whose job is keyboard- and mouse-intensive. The program is speaker independent, but you can improve its recognition accuracy in brief training sessions (shown).