Voive for vista

Capacity Building Resources. Black Lives Matter Statement. Technical Assistance. Emergency Preparedness. Job Board. Past Events. Cross-Sector Collaboration. Nonprofit Capacity Building. It's likely that Vista will make mistakes when transcribing your dictation. The good news is that they're easy to correct. For example, if you say, "I need another byte" and Vista types "I need another bite," you can just say, "Correct bite," and you'll be presented with a list of replacement words, as shown in Figure J.

If the correct word isn't in the list, just say, "Spell it. You can access several advanced configuration settings by clicking the Advanced Speech Options link in the left pane of the Speech Recognition Options dialog box, as shown in Figure L.

Here, you can create and train speech recognition profiles. This is useful when more than one person shares the computer. You can also choose whether to run speech recognition at startup and whether to allow the computer to review your documents and mail to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition engine.

In addition, you can select the number of spaces to insert after punctuation marks and adjust the microphone level. I was impressed with the ease of use and accuracy of the Vista speech recognition engine after half an hour of training time.

I've tried dictation programs before and never found them at all usable; I could always type much faster than I could dictate and correct text. Now I finally feel that if I should ever lose the use of my hands, there would still be a way for me to continue to get my work done. For me, a combination of speech recognition primarily for commands and keyboard input works well. I can't vouch for how fast it works on a less powerful computer.

I'm also using a headset microphone. As I mentioned, my experiences shows that a desktop microphone doesn't work nearly as well. Putting in some time training it to your own voice also makes a big difference. For obvious reasons, speech recognition wouldn't work well in a noisy environment where you share an office with other people who are talking or on the phone while you work, nor would it work well if you like to listen to music or talk radio while you work.

Before you decide to start talking to your computer all the time, be aware that there's a security issue involved with using speech recognition.

George Ou went into detail about it in his blog. Here's the gist: An attacker could embed a sound file that plays automatically when you go to a Web page or send you a sound file in e-mail that plays when you double-click on it. If the sound file that plays through your computer speakers is a command recognized by Vista's Speech engine, and the speech recognition feature is running, the computer will carry out the command. This isn't quite as scary as it could be.

To perform most administrative tasks in Vista, you have to respond to the User Account Control prompt, which can't be done by voice. However, it's possible for the attacker to delete a file on your computer using this method.

When speech recognition is in Sleep mode, it responds only to the words "Start listening"--but the attacker could easily put that phrase at the beginning of the sound file to turn it on.

Thus, the best practice is to always turn speech recognition off completely when you aren't using it, rather than leaving it in Sleep mode, and don't configure it to run when you start Windows.

Debra Littlejohn Shinder, MCSE, MVP is a technology consultant, trainer, and writer who has authored a number of books on computer operating systems, networking, and security.

Deb is a tech editor, developmental editor, and contributor to over 20 add Figure A Vista speech recognition is set up and configured through the Control Panel. How it works There are two ways to use speech recognition technology: To control the software: Start and close programs and switch between them, save and delete files, and so forth.

To dictate text to be typed verbatim into a document and edit the text. Setting up and configuring speech recognition Before you can start using speech recognition, you need to complete the following steps: Turn on speech recognition. Set up your microphone. Complete a tutorial not required, but recommended. Train the recognition engine to understand your voice not required, but recommended.

Figure C The first step is to configure your speech recognition experience. Figure D The Speech control console appears at the top of the screen when speech recognition is turned on. Click here to order the book through Amazon. We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

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