Mmiri.com

" Speak & See PC DVD or DVD-ROM

Let me start by saying that the Speak and see easy software package is a good product, no doubt excellent if you have accessibility troubles, however I got this product in order to help me write articles quicker.

I have always found these types of software tedious to work with so avoided them but due to the high praise I decided to go for this one.

It works well, I am very impressed and am certainly going to use it more often, although it does take a while to setup in terms of other programs after the initial stage it recognises my voice very well with so few steps to learn.

The equipment provided is good and the microphone is adequate although I replaced it with my radio microphone after a while because it was just easier to use.

The whole software package is quite good and provides valuable tools to read text out or write down as you dictate.

In conclusion, I don't know whether it is worth the price but it is certainly worth a go if you are interested or having difficulties typing or spelling.

Lewis Hiley - Sheffield, UK (United Kingdom) "

" Exceptional voice recognition, but be wary of the extras...

I must admit that I didn't quite know what to expect from this product. Software that could take commands or dictation from the sound of your own voice, that could read out sentences on screen as well as aid in language learning.

Installation was easy, you have two DVDs to install. One installs Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which the other products rely on. The second DVD installs Nuance Speak & See and other miscellany. My only quibble with the installation was that, even though I wanted it to install on my D: drive, it still required over 1Gb on my C: drive.

This led to me having to perform a major clean-up activity on my PC before I could install it. This could certainly be improved.

However, once installed I was immediately impressed by the basic offerings. After listening to my voice in the supplied headset with microphone, the Dragon software was very good at understanding what I said.

I tried writing a letter, and was impressed by the high degree of accuracy, even when I was talking at speed. Ok, it's not perfect, no voice recognition software can be perfect, and it does require clear dictation.

You will also need to use a mouse for some jobs, like editing and punctuation. However, it can be trained to learn from recognition mistakes, which is an essential and useful feature.

Dragon is also very good at accepting commands. "Search the web for things to do in London" you say - your favourite browser opens up, it takes you to a search engine and types "things to do in London" for you in the search field.

Dragon can also be trained to accept new commands, which gives it great potential to be extended to suit most needs.

With Speak & See, documents and web pages can be read out to you. The default British English voice is very clear and again I was extremely impressed by this.

If some words are mispronounced, you can also train the software to say that word differently, which is also very useful. There are several other voices provided, including other European and Asian accents, but I was less impressed by these.

They sounded very disjointed, as if they were thrown together at the last minute days before the product hit the shelves.

Speak & See generally fails to cope well in dual monitor set-ups. If your PC has two monitors, you will find some of the features don't work properly.

Search bars appear across the join in the monitors making them difficult to use, and the ScreenRuler, which is designed to enlarge characters in a moveable rectangle that can be shifted up and down the screen won't work on the second display. This could be improved.

I was also less than impressed by the features that were supposed to aid language learning. I expected Speak & See to be able to read out a French webpage for me, for example, in a French accent, and provide some kind of translation facility. This is not how it works.

It will attempt to read the French with a very British accent, pronouncing it totally wrong. A built-in dictionary is supposed to help you translate foreign words quickly, but I couldn't get this feature to work smoothly at all.

I can see this product being useful for those who need the features because they find it difficult to use a keyboard, as the dictation and voice control software is outstanding and highly adaptable.

For other purposes perhaps not. It's no more than a gimmick really, and an expensive toy at that. Don't buy this product if you need help with language learning, it will be an expensive mistake.

Mark R. Bannister - London, England "