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| ViaVoice Millenium Edition for Macintosh | Macintosh |
 For many years, the lack
of a continuous-speech dictation program has been a glaring deficiency in the eyes of
those professionals working in Mac law offices. However, IBM's ViaVoice Millenium Edition
for the Macintosh appears to have finally rectified the problem with the recent release of
its solid version 1.0.I received my demo version of ViaVoice Millenium shortly before Christmas and worked with it for approximately three weeks before attending the MACWORLD Expo in San Francisco. After testing the product, I can honestly say that I am impressed with its overall quality and ease of use. I do wish, however, that the program directly supported text entry into mainstream word processors. Version 1.0 utilizes a proprietary dictation module and transfers text via a voice command directly into five programs that include AOL, AppleWorks, MS Word, Netscape Messenger and Outlook Express. On the positive side, the ViaVoice Millenium Edition really works. After completing the 30-minute enrollment period that enabled the program to learn my speech peculiarities, ViaVoice translated my oral dictation almost flawlessly. In addition, the program continued to learn my speech patterns as I corrected errors. After three weeks of working with ViaVoice Millenium, I achieved approximately 98 percent accuracy in my voice-dictation tasks. ViaVoice ships with an install CD and a stylish noise-cancellation headset microphone from Andrea Electronics. The included headset enables an attorney to listen to his or her computer read-back dictated text without disturbing others. Setting up ViaVoice is a fairly easy process. Once the program is installed, a setup assistant takes you through a voice-modeling process. This process involves reading one or two fairly lengthy stories into your computer. This enables the program to evaluate your particular voice pattern. Although the ViaVoice instructions indicate that only one story needs to be read, I strongly suggest you read both stories. Thereafter, the program took approximately 15 to 20 minutes to compare the dictation with the correct words to establish my personal voice model. Adding additional voice modules for other users isn't as straightforward. The program's prompts for adding users are unnecessarily confusing and should be refined. To dictate, simply launch the SpeakPad module and begin talking into the microphone. Dictation is suspended by telling the microphone to "go to sleep," and reactivated by simply saying "wake up." To correct misdictated words, say "correct [word]," and ViaVoice launches the correction window and provides a list of words that can be substituted for the incorrect one. You can select from the list or type the correction yourself. You can also correct a wrong word by selecting the text within the body of SpeakPad. ViaVoice's Analyze My Documents feature examines existing text documents for those words that aren't in the program's standard vocabulary. I had ViaVoice analyze a document containing a number of legal specific phrases. The program quickly isolated the unfamiliar words and prompted me to speak each word into my personal vocabulary module. To use this feature, however, your document must be one of the five specified text entry applications or Simple Text. When you need to transfer your text into AppleWorks, Word, Messenger, Outlook Express or AOL, you tell the program to "transfer to [application]." The text is then selected and target application opened. From this point, the text can be pasted into a new document. If you own an additional word processor, simply copy and paste the text using a menu command. ViaVoice includes basic menu-driven formatting features and an extensive list of voice commands to format your text in SpeakPad. It also includes a 64,000 word vocabulary with a 260,000 backup dictionary. Online help resources and an illustrated 44-page manual are also included. ViaVoice supports user-defined dictation macros for commonly used expressions or specialized phrases. For example, I created a macro to include my name, and designated it as "signature." Whenever I dictated this word, the program automatically typed "David Saraceno." The program can also read back dictated text using the Macintosh text-to-speech function. |
IBM Corp. (888) 411-1WEB www.ibm.com MacOS 8.5 or higher $89.95 Reviewed by David A. Saraceno, solo practitioner, Coeur d'Arlene, Idaho PRO CONS VERDICT |
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