Customer Reviews

VIA VOICE FOR WINDOWS PRO

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Having read the above reviews I am astounded at the misfortune of the guy with 3 computers and the recommended specs given in the other review.
I have a bog-standard Compaq Presario 450mhz - 192mb RAM and have recently installed WinXP and - in a spate of idleness - Viavoice Release 9 along with the patch from the IBM website for WinXP compatibilty. The product works beautifully!!
Much better than Release 8 on Win98 (which already worked well). Recognition seems vastly improved and desktop navigation works splendidly (direct dictation into MS-DOS prompts is great fun).
I'd love to have a 1.4ghz with 256mb to try it on but given that my recognition accuracy is around 95% anyway I can't see what difference it would make.

I was very dissapointed with this product! The USB headset that comes with it will not work on all 3 of my comupters! I contacted Plantronics, and they told me it wasn't compatible with the Intel USB chipset on my motherboards. 3 Computers, and I can't use the thing!
Also, ViaVoice keeps crashing my computer. It works great when it works, but I'm afraid to use it be it causes my otherwise stable system to lock up every 15-20 minutes or so. I think this product is still buggy and not quite ready for prime time. Buyer beware!

I tried both Via Voice 8 and 9. For the most part I still prefer L&H Voice Xpress V.4

The accuracy of IBM Via Voice V 9 is better, but lacks featurs such as adjusting the microphone level found in Voice Xpress.

I see that version 10 of Via Voice is out as an upgrade (a change in the previous policy). I would have considered spending the $90 or so bucks to upgrade and get the mike control for background noise, but I never got my $75 rebate from IBM for purchasing Version 9 a year ago. You can get Voice Xpress V 4 (standard) with the Platronics DSP folding headset for the price of the Upgrade cost of Via Voice alone. A better way to go if you are on a budget.

This software can recognize voiced speech, but it takes several hours to configure it so that it doesn't make lots of mistakes.

For a person who has Arthritis of Carpel Tunnel this is a great program, but they likely will need to voice out commmands for several hours to ready the program for near errorless preformance.

This is not a review for this version, but a comment on IBM's update policy. I have an earlier version of ViaVoice, namely the Millenium Pro version, which I previously wrote a positive review about. However, if I want to update to the newest version I have to pay full price, since IBM only allows users who bought the previous version within a narrow, specified time period to get the upgrade price. Everyone else has to pay full price!
Not even Microsoft who has often, deserved or undeserved, been called predatory, has to my knowledge never had such a restrictive software upgrade policy towards end-users.
This is outrageous, and it certainly makes me want to look for alternatives!

Via Voice works on my Pentium 4 XP operating system.
It recognizes a large percentage of my speaking BUT not all and makes some amazing mistakes. It may get better with more training. It is not yet working well enough to use for full time work BUT works very well when my carpel tunnel kicks in. The computer responses well to my spoken commands. Not as quick as the mouse but when you can not move the mouse without pain it is the only way to get work done.