Voice v.10.0 Pro USB Edition

Other products by Nuance Communications

Product Features

• The new speech engine with improved background noise adaptations lead to far better dictation and voice-command accuracy
• Create your own macro commands that can be spoken into the microphone -- no more keyboards needed
• Document templates work with Microsoft Word for quick & easy business letters, reports, memos and faxes
• Add your own custom acronyms, slang terms, nicknames and more
• Dictate, edit, format and correct your dictated text in ViaVoice SpeakPad

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• ASIN: B0000A58IX
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 21, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,970 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #19 in	Software > Utilities > Voice Recognition
  #80 in	Software > Business & Office > Communication

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Edition is the flagship offering of the ViaVoice for Windows. It represents the merger of high-productivity software with advanced microphone technology. ViaVoice Pro USB Edition offers great dictation versatility so you can dictate, edit, and correct text in SpeakPad, the resident speech-enabled word processor, or in Word, Excel, and other applications within the Microsoft Office product suites (including Office XP) or directly into a variety of other PC applications. ViaVoice Pro USB Edition supports Windows XP Professional and Home, Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 6) operating systems.

ViaVoice Pro USB Edition expands the usefulness of the powerful Navigation Macro Center found in earlier generations of IBM ViaVoice for Windows. With ViaVoice Pro USB Edition, you can create macros that will run across multiple applications. In addition, you can now control the speed at which your macros run. ViaVoice Pro USB Edition supports the use of select digital handheld recorders.

ViaVoice Pro USB Edition is the IBM desktop voice-recognition product that features IBM ViaVoice Documents: customized, Microsoft Word-based templates for letters, reports, faxes, and e-mails. It also features VoiceMarks, which can read you the name of a customized navigation macro as an audio confirmation that the macro is being run correctly.

Included in the box are: IBM ViaVoice for Windows, Pro USB Edition (release 10) on CD-ROM (U.S. English vocabulary), noise-canceling USB headset microphone, a user's Guide, and a command reference card.

Product Description

IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Edition is the flagship offering of the ViaVoice for Windows, Release 10 product line. It represents the merger of high-productivity software with advanced microphone technology. Pro USB Edition offers great dictation versatility; dictate, edit, and correct text in SpeakPad, the resident speech-enabled word processor, or in Word, Excel, and other applications within the Microsoft Office product suites, including Office XP, or directly into a variety of other PC applications. Pro USB supports Windows XP Professional and Home, Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 6) operating systems.

Pro USB Edition expands the usefulness of the powerful Navigation Macro Center found in earlier generations of IBM ViaVoice for Windows. With Pro USB, users can create macros that will run across multiple applications. In addition, users can now control the speed at which their macros run. Pro USB Edition supports the use of select digital handheld recorders.

Pro USB Edition is the IBM desktop voice recognition product that features IBM ViaVoice Documents -- Microsoft Word-based customized templates for letters, reports, faxes, and e-mails -- and VoiceMarks, which can read the name of a customized navigation macro to the user as an audio confirmation that the macro is being run correctly.

Main Features

Manufacturer: Nuance Communications, Inc

Manufacturer Part Number: G909A-G00-10.0

Manufacturer Website Address: www.nuance.com

Software Sub Type: Voice Recognition

Software Name: IBM VOICE v.10.0 Pro USB Edition - Complete Product

Features & Benefits:

A new IBM speech engine with improved background noise adaptation, first used in the IBM ViaVoice for Windows product line in the Release 10 portfolio, can result in greater dictation and voice command accuracy.

Noise-cancelling USB headset microphone included.

Transcription support for sele

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Microphone is Key, November 20, 2003

By	Jay Hann (Danville, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The real-time speech recognition of IBM ViaVoice 10 is extremely good. It is possible to get 99% accuracy. Possible is the key word here. In order to do that, you need a good microphone (better than what is included) and you will have to teach it words that it doesn't know (i.e. Plantronics, uncommon names). And you'll need to be in a supported product like Microsoft Word. If all these conditions are met, you're in like Flint.

I, unfortunately, was trying to use Internet Explorer, and the support was less than stellar. The voice command "surf the web" did launch it and the "home", "back", and "forward" commands worked well to do the obvious. But the undocumented commands became key to navigation. To tab from one field or link to the next, you say "next field". "Previous field" is like a shift-tab to go backwards. "next line" and "previous line" seem to be equivalent to the down and up arrows.

The microphone included with this package is the Andrea NC-61 along with the Andrea USB pod, which is a half of a sound card (microphone side only) that connects through your USB port. I found the quality of the pod to be excellent. Andrea advertises the NC-61 headset as using noise cancelling technology, but I found this microphone to not even be directional, and pretty much useless in any environment in which anyone else was speaking, however softly, in the same room. I did purchase separately an Andrea ANC-750 microphone and the noise cancelling on that microphone was quite good. (note: there is some white noise in the background that is audible if you use the ANC-750 to make a recording, but this should be ignored, as it is part of the noise cancelling system.)

The best performance was when I used a high quality studio microphone in a quiet environment to create my voice profile by reading their text. The recognition accuracy was amazing. I used an AKG C-3000 (needs phantom power), but I've heard that a Sennheiser MD431 II is another excellent microphone, and has noise canceling properties as well. The best performance I got from my ANC-750 headset was when I used the voice profile created with the C-3000.

I give the voice recognition part of the software a 5, the navigational ability a 2, and the included microphone a 2, hence my rating of 3 overall.

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Incompatible with Word 2003, January 4, 2004

By	Dr. Edward M. Erris (Clarks Summit, Pa United States) - See all my reviews

I have used ViaVoice Ver10 Pro USB for a little over a year with great results. On a fast computer system it keeps up with you almost no matter the speed of your speaking. It does occassionally crash. There seems to be a problem with it writing back to memory. IBM was unable to find the problem. It had done this on other computers as well. I've used it with MS Office XP Pro on my old computer. I upgraded to a new computer with MS Office Small Business Ed 2003 only to find that ViaVoice is not compatible with the components. I spent $9.95 in tech support only to be told that! They said that they plan to put that info on their website(Scansoft is now the tech support for this product). To date they haven't. Guess, they want to sell as many copies as possible before they make a patch. Anyway, if you're planning to use this with Office 2003 or higher it will not work and tech support will do nothing to help you except take your money.
Update: 5/5/2004: I contacted ScanSoft to find out if they are making a patch to make it compatable with Word 2003. Their standard answer is "We're working on it." If you go to their website you will find that they still haven't put in a disclaimer that it doesn't work with all Word editions. It just says that it does work with Word. I wonder how many refunds they are giving out for false advertising? I'm also surprised that the major PC magazines haven't picked up on this.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Crashes, crashes, crashes - DO NOT BUY, April 17, 2004

By	D. Marsden "marzdee" (Djibouti) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Installed ViaVoice 10 in Windows XP Pro...

And sometimes it opens and sometimes it doesn't. Mainly doesn't.

Then I find this...via Google..

Problem:

After launching Dragon or ViaVoice and clicking a link in one of the menus, the system locks up or freezes. Other symptoms include Dragon NaturallySpeaking's Select-and-Say or ViaVoice's dictation and commands fail in Microsoft Office XP applications, such as Word and Microsoft Outlook.

Cause:

Microsoft Office XP's "Alternate User Input" installs a background process called CTFMON.exe which can interfere with Dragon or ViaVoice. The following information was taken from the Microsoft website:

"...Ctfmon.exe monitors the active windows and provides text input service support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative user input technologies...."

And you can get NO, repeat, NO, help from ScanSoft.

DO NOT BUY!