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I was asked this week…

Do you know of a [good] software voice program that turns text to speech and helps to predict the text you’re writing?

And is there a good program for converting what you say into text on the screen?

General information on assistive technology: We have a site to help you learn more about different assistive technologies at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/at/types.aspx.  We also offer and an online tool to help select the the appropriate application.  As noted on the site… 

Identifying the best assistive technology solution often requires an in-depth needs assessment to understand how a difficult or impairment impacts computer use.

There are many types of assistive technology products and hundreds of products available. To be sure you have identified the right product to meet your needs, we recommend you locate an accessibility center in your area or use a needs assessment tool.

Microsoft Accessibility Resource Centers are available to help you identify the right assistive technology before you purchase a product, and to help you set up your computer and train you on how to use the new product. Many of these centers have lending services, so you can try a product before committing to purchasing it. These centers provide expert consultation on assistive technology and accessibility built into Microsoft Windows. Each center is equipped with video demonstrations and accessibility tutorials that show you how to make computing easier, more convenient, and more comfortable.

Included on the site are a couple of case studies on applications of assistive technologies in action: see http://www.microsoft.com/enable/casestudy/rtc.aspx and http://www.microsoft.com/enable/casestudy/georgia.aspx

For predictive typing, see Adaptxt: it’s a $20 predictive typing app for Windows word processing and emailing. http://www.adaptxt.com/?node_id=3.5.1.2&id=1

For text-to-speech, consider an application like Natural Voice Text To Speech Reader (http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=2847770) which is about $30 (free trial version available).

Or try the free SayIt! Text-To-Speech Sidebar Gadget for Windows Vista (http://widgetfront.com/vista-sidebar-gadgets/sayit-text-to-speech-sidebar-gadget/) and the Sayvoice Text-to-Speech Reader (http://www.download.com/Sayvoice-Text-to-Speech-Reader/3000-7239_4-10723357.html).

A mix of both features and more: There is also the more comprehensive Read&Write application from TextHelp (more information is available on the company’s website here) that includes many features including text to speech conversion and word prediction.  More expensive (>$300), this is used by many schools.

For basic voice recognition, the consensus is that the standard edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 works well for most applications (see nuance’s site for details) and sells on the street for $60-90. It works with many popular Windows apps.

For computers with Windows Vista, there’s already some basic voice recognition built in to Windows Speech Recognition. Our son uses it for speech recognition to create text documents on his laptop. For more on this, see How to Use Windows Vista Speech Recognition.

Before you can begin using speech recognition, you have to train the application: this can take 20-30 minutes to set up. Once you complete the work, the recognition application learns your speech patterns and intonation over time, and overall recognition accuracy increases. See this link for best practices for enabling voice recognition.

Hope this helps.

Update 072608: Thanks to Blake (http://bhandler.spaces.live.com) for his feedback and suggestion of Deskbot…

“I’ve also used a free program called Deskbot which was recommended by a former Microsoft text 2 speech guy (now in another MS department)
http://blogs.msdn.com/texttospeech/archive/2005/12/29/508078.aspx“

Following on Ina Fried’s blog post ‘Microsoft looks to “Mojave” to revive Vista’s image‘ this week with a highlight of Mojave research, Emil Protalinski of Arstechnica has this post on how ‘XP users… start to love Vista‘

“The company hasn’t figured out how it will use this to market Vista (the company has video footage of users exclaiming “wow!” and so on), but the Mojave project will likely help in Microsoft’s plan to tell the “real Vista story.” This is some real ammo here: these are XP lovers saying they love Vista, not just more Microsoft employees giving statements to sell the software giant’s latest operating system.”

Although expected, some of the resulting comments are of interest. One that sticks with me from one ars reader:

“How about telling them that Mojave is the installed OS on a cheap-ass computer from Best Buy loaded up with trial-ware? Within hours the users will complain that Mojave is worse than Vista.”

And this more positive note…

“That said, Vista is, for me, the best client OS I have ever sat down to. I know this is a personal choice. Some will say that about Mac, some will say that about Linux, some will say it about XP or even Win98 (yeah, those guys are still out there!). This is, IMO, a PR issue. …

“It’s hip to hate Vista. [writer’s emphasis] The hipness will wear off. It pretty much always does.”

Once again, as my kids will be happy to attest, I’m not hip: I actually like Vista SP1.

As Benjamin J. Romano of the Seattle Times posted yesterday in his play-by-play coverage of the FAM (the financial analyst meeting at Microsoft), there’s been some success of Windows Vista with significant improvements over the last year…

“On security, for example, Windows Vista is 62 percent more secure than Windows XP SP2, he said.

“Microsoft has sold 180 million Vista licenses since it launched in January 2007. Sales have been “very balanced” between consumer and business customers.

As Mary Jo notes in her post ‘Microsoft to get more ‘Apple-like’ in PC, phone space‘ covering the FAM…

During the final Q&A session at FAM, when asked by a Wall Street analyst about what he meant by his “changing the way we work with hardware makers” comment, Ballmer said Microsoft is working with its OEMs to “show them additional choices they can make” to make PCs and devices work better. For example, by configuring a laptop one way, boot times can be made faster, Ballmer said… and improve users’ end-to-end experience with Windows and Windows Mobile systems.”

I hope so.  As I explained in my post ‘A USB smart drive is more than just a memory fob…’ whilst configuring my PCs at home, I wiped clean my wife’s old Dell notebook and saw a several system improvements… 

I have found (as have many others) that uninstalling various pre-installed software can improve performance.  In more drastic situations, reinstalling the OS with a clean boot makes for an improved customer experience (assuming that the OEM makes it easy for you to find all the needed drivers, add-on software and utilities).

My unscientific findings: with a clean install on an old laptop, it takes only 20 seconds to recover from Hibernate, and less than five seconds to recover from Sleep.  A DVD inserted in the drive is playing in less than 20 seconds. 

And again, this post by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic, who uses a Mac “because The Atlantic uses Macs.”

I appear to be the only person in the known universe who did not have a problem with Vista. My Sony Vista laptop was fast, woke up out of sleep mode just fine, and if I had any complaint it was with the crap Sony loaded on it, not the OS itself. Vista itself was lovely, though I turned off the damn security alerts.

Blast from the past, here’s more info on improving PC performance by removing pre-installed items:

• Rid your PC of crapware video – CNET TV
• How to fully de-gunk a PC of Crapware | George Ou | ZDNet.com
• PC World – Zap the Crap on a New Windows PC
• Banish crapware with The PC Decrapifier (Lifehacker)

Tags: performance, tips, Windows Vista, notebook, hardware, Dell, HP, customer experience.