Jim Dingman is a fast typist, but he prefers to dictate. "I write all day long," says Dingman, CEO of Capital Realty Analysts in Palm Desert, Calif. "Dictating helps me think more creatively." Dingman doesn't use a voice recorder such as a Dictaphone -- he's more techno-savvy than that. He uses dictation software to talk right into his word processor. "It works especially well when I have to look at a document, like a zoning book, while I'm writing," he says. Sometimes, Dingman takes his laptop in the car and even dictates while driving.

Computerized dictation has been available for several years, but it is just now catching on. That's because the newest voice-recognition products enable you to speak in a natural voice and to edit documents with such simple commands as: "Delete the previous two sentences." Before, you...had...to...speak...like...this, using annoying pauses between words. Even simple editing required the use of long strings of voice commands.

Vendors such as Dragon Systems, IBM, Lernout & Hauspie (L&H), and Philips Electronics claim they are now selling voice-recognition software by the bushel. Buyers, they say, include executives who are poor typists and professionals, such as Dingman, who must examine other documents while they write reports (Dingman uses Dragon Systems' NaturallySpeaking). What's more, these programs now cost around $100 to $200 -- much less than they did even a year ago.

So should you trade in your keyboard for a microphone? On the USS Enterprise of Star Trek fame, people talked to computers as if they were chatting with their best friends. But as Business Week Online learned, voice dictation on 20th century earth requires patience, at least at first.

TRAINING TECHNOLOGY. After installing L&H Voice Xpress Professional (a competitor to NaturallySpeaking), its on-screen dialog boxes help you calibrate the microphone, which is included. The program then prompts you to repeat 230 phrases, which appear on-screen. This teaches the software to recognize the specific intonations of your voice and increases its accuracy. This initial phase takes about an hour.

You can now begin dictating, but beware: The next hour can be maddening. In our tests, Voice Xpress initially was wildly inaccurate, and the program crashed every time we loaded the E-mail and contact manager Microsoft Outlook. The programs are incompatible, it turns out. A spokesperson for L&H acknowledged the bug and says that in the newest version of the software, the problem has been fixed. If you happen to buy an older copy, the company says a fix is available. Dingman reported no such problems with NaturallySpeaking.

In that first hour, we were dictating at 90 words per minute with 85% accuracy, which roughly translates to a frustrating 30 errors per page. However, accuracy improves as you correct errors. To do that, you highlight the incorrect word and say, "Correct that." A dialog box appears in which you can retype the word or select from a menu of similar-sounding words. After making a correction, Voice Xpress rarely makes that same mistake again.

Within a few hours, Voice Xpress was about 90% accurate at more than 100 words per minute. Voice-dictation software vendors promise up to 95% accuracy after a week or two of training. "It was very frustrating at first, but I was excited about getting to the end result," confirms Dingman. "And the guy I bought it from was clear about not expecting much for about 30 days. He was right."

In addition to patience, you must make sure that you have a system that can handle voice-recognition software. Dragon's NaturallySpeaking requires at least a 200-Mhz Pentium with 32 Mb of RAM and 180 Mb of free hard-disk space. Voice Xpress Professional has similar requirements. However, Dingman says that if you don't have at least twice that amount of RAM on a 300-Mhz PC, you will encounter delays between when you say something and when it appears on-screen.

The long, sometimes frustrating ramp-up period is not for everybody. But Dingman feels amply rewarded for his time and effort. "It absolutely makes me more efficient," he says. "And the more I use it, the better it gets." Come to think of it, maybe we earthlings will be communing seamlessly with our PCs before too long.

By David Haskin in Madison, Wis.

Back to top of story
To: TECHNOLOGY