SUCCESSFUL VOICE RECOGNITION GUIDE

(Extracts from the Introduction)

The Guide - Successful Voice Recognition - "I'll talk you through it", written by Alex Larkman, contains clear, non-technical advice to help you get the best from your Dragon NaturallySpeaking® software.

How?

By taking you through the steps that enabled a user, who had no relevant computer experience and no wish to learn the mysteries of typing, to really benefit from today's dictation technology and his Personal Computer purchases.

In addition to my mini-autobiography, you will find a brief history of voice recognition, with explanations about its chequered past, and why you should now take it seriously. It is a sophisticated low-cost product which will create text from your dictation twice as fast and more accurately than most typists. This guide will help you learn how to use it effectively.

I have been in the computer business for over 30 years but only as a salesman, which makes me the complete antithesis of a geek.

After a relatively amusing career in the Army (Parachute Regiment and two years with the Royal Marines) spanning 15 years and ending up as a Major, I decided to take life more seriously and become a civilian. I joined IBM at their office in Mayfair as a trainee salesman with a larger salary than I had been earning in the Army, but was nevertheless nervous about the momentous risk that I was taking.

Little did I know that there was even less chance of being sacked from IBM than from the Army. IBM recruited quite a few people from the Services then, presumably because they wouldn't complain about the uniform which was blue or grey suit and white shirt with a dark uninteresting tie, wouldn't try to form a trade union and knew how to hold a knife and fork.

At that time there was no limit to the amount of education that IBM was prepared to invest in its salesmen and I was sent on course after course over a period of about 9 months. Much of this time was spent on sales training (known for some curious reason as "communications")and most of the remainder consisted of technicalities such as how computers work, programming etc.

Selling IBM products at that time when IBM was at its peak was comparatively simple because most customers were extremely worried about the possibility of losing their jobs by not buying IBM. Unfortunately this did not apply to the Government Branch where I was unlucky enough to work, trying to sell computers to the Government who had a strong policy of buying only British (ICL). After eight years of frustration, watching salesmen in other branches, such as in the City, with flourishing careers, I was glad to leave in order to join the emerging, soon to be burgeoning, computer leasing industry.

I joined Atlantic Computer Leasing, which at that time consisted of only about 10 people, and was with them for about two years. My misgivings about their mode of operation were proved to be correct when several years later they were responsible for the biggest financial crash the City had ever known.

In the meantime I had moved on to selling minicomputers with a strange company in Slough, not dissimilar to that depicted in "The Office", and called Perkin-Elmer (what a name!). I then sold local area networks for a company called Xionics for whom I was the only salesman and my career peaked when we won a multi-million pound order against 200 competitors at the Greater London Council (GLC). We installed only about £2 million worth of equipment before the GLC was closed down by Margaret Thatcher.

I hope I have now illustrated that I am an articulate and numerate person, not bad on paper (and voice!) but not gifted with exceptional technical ability. This can be a good thing when selling complicated items such as local area networks or voice recognition software, because I am usually able to see things from the customers’ point of view.

I have always had an ambivalent relationship with computers, and it was a complete revelation when someone came to my house about 10 years ago and gave me a demonstration on his computer of a voice recognition system called DragonDictate.

He plugged his headset into the computer and uttered words one at a time which the computer seemed to understand and put on the screen. Errors were easily corrected and I was very impressed, especially when I was allowed to have a go myself and it worked even for me. My inferiority complex about not being able to type was no longer valid because I had decided to become an expert in voice recognition.

This would have the added advantage of enabling me to become familiar with personal computers (PCs). Even I could see, despite my limited strategic vision, that these were going to become ubiquitous at the expense of the large costly and cumbersome machines with which, over the years, I had become only too depressingly familiar. Bill Gates was quoted as saying that voice recognition was the "Holy Grail" of computing and that made me very excited indeed. Mind you, it didn't take him long to realise that the "Holy Grail" was, after all, the Internet.

On the subject of the Internet, the witty Robert Wilensky in the Mail on Sunday 16 Feb 1997 wrote :-

"We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”

I teamed up with a friend of mine who had worked with me in IBM. Having once been a systems analyst, he was very technically competent and we started Pyxis Computer Services Ltd as a Dragon Systems reseller.

For the first couple of years selling DragonDictate we did very well, selling the software, offering consultancy and programming, installing and training. At that time the software cost £650 to over £1,000 and people were prepared to spend several hundred pounds on training. All seemed to be OK, and we were looking forward to progressing beyond DragonDictate's one word at a time ( known as discrete speech) into the magical world of continuous voice recognition. How could this possibly fail?

With the arrival of continuous speech (Dragon Systems’ NaturallySpeaking®) IBM brought out ViaVoice and other companies such as Lernout & Hauspie and Philips had equivalent products and a price war started.

Customers' expectations became very high indeed and the costs very low e.g. down to £30 for half-baked versions of voice recognition. Not only was there very little margin in selling the software any more, but all of the products were quite unstable causing frozen screens and crashes. Dragon Systems’ NaturallySpeaking® was no exception and it became a nightmare to sell, install and support.

By now it had become a retail product sold through outlets such as PC World who offered no training or support, and the resellers who were prepared to carry this out were priced out of the market. Plenty of customers bought the software though, only to find that their dream of talking into their computers was a delusion.

You had to jump through so many hoops such as, for example, your computer would never be powerful enough, have enough memory, disk space, a soundcard or a reliable headset, all of which added considerably to what had now become the minimal cost of the software. No one thought that training was important any more. Although there were few successes in commercial life everyone was familiar with the concept of voice recognition but there were greater priorities, such as controlling the growth of PCs in an organization. Voice recognition was no longer of interest to anyone.

The problem with voice recognition under these circumstances was that you had to be committed to make it work for you. People with repetitive strain injury (RSI) or arthritic hands, for example, didn't have much choice and it worked very well for them because they were prepared to invest in being trained properly.

Today, it is a very different story. Voice recognition software is no longer a distress purchase!

The costs of PCs have plunged whilst they have become ever more powerful with much larger memories, disk space and more reliable Operating Systems. Voice recognition software has steadily evolved in the past few years; it is now much faster to install and train, and its accuracy has improved considerably. It is now a pleasure to use.

Even more importantly, it is now a stable product. Bearing in mind its enormous power and potential usefulness it is also very cheap.

Using this guide could avoid the need for you to incur the cost of being trained professionally.

The guide takes you through installation, enrolment and initial training to the point where you will be able to produce text by talking to your computer faster than any secretary can type and with great accuracy (98% plus).

Also, it doesn't make spelling mistakes which makes it extremely useful for poor spellers and people with dyslexia.

Once you are at this point the sky's the limit.

Although, as I never tire of informing people, I am no technician, I have picked up quite a few tricks of the trade over the years …

… while training other people

… and using voice recognition products myself

These have all been included in the guide expressed in my usual simplistic terms.

Today, it is generally accepted that the market leader in voice recognition software is Dragon Systems (owned by Scansoft). Up to now the only method of guaranteed success in learning to use this software has been to employ an instructor on a one-to-one basis.

But the usual cost for this sort of training at, say £200+ for two hours is prohibitive for most people, especially when compared with the relatively low cost of the software.

That is why I am now offering initial training for an hour on my computer at my office for £50. This means that you can investigate the usefulness of voice recognition software before committing yourself to buying the appropriate software or hardware. I will also provide follow on support and advice without further cost.

Further details are available from Pyxis Computer Services Ltd.

Advances in voice technology in the past two years have resulted in much greater accuracy - up to 99%, and greater speed - up to 160 words per minute. Training can be carried out far more quickly than ever before which makes the process of getting started relatively painless.