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Vista's Speech Recognition

extremetech.com — One of Vista's coolest features is one nobody talks about. Speech recognition is built into every copy of Vista, and it's more than just dictation. If you have Windows Vista, even the Home Basic version, you already have one of the more powerful speech recognition systems available. We explore how it works.

Who dugg this? Made popular Apr 3, 2007

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  • RedLion, on 10/12/2007, -5/+60sagags: that was a shameful case of selective media editing. you can see how the voice recognition worked in entire version of that video here @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc
  • geoken, on 10/12/2007, -9/+48"There's a popular saying that all innovation comes from the wide and open industry but it only becomes visible/popular when Microsoft nicks it (READ: buys some company [1])."

    Your right. Microsoft obviously stole this idea from some small open source project. I mean it's not like anyone has ever thought of using voice recognition to control computers before.
  • cfelde, on 10/12/2007, -15/+52Let's try Perl (!) programming using speech recognition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLqUf4cdwc&eurl= :-P
  • Flappy3, on 10/12/2007, -9/+46Dear aunt, let's set so double
    the killer delete select all
  • Smills, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34Okay guys. I have completely written this using speech recognition. I am not correcting any mistakes it makes. It is normally very accurate. As you can see. So far, not one mistake. This is what I like about Vista's speech recognition.
  • vtbarrera, on 02/03/2009, -1/+30This is so sweet. I love typing with my mouth.
  • estvir, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30> For those of us who learned how to type speech recognition is pretty much useless.

    For those of us who learned to walk (Or have the ability) ramps/wheelchairs are pretty much useless.
  • noodlehed, on 10/12/2007, -9/+28Ewe can use peach re-cog nation four hosting replies on dig, two. Bet chew wish ewe up graded now!
  • EvlD99, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22Pretty interesting. I would have never normally tried it but the article sure makes me want to give it a go when I have some free time.
  • drm237, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20Is your touch typing 99%+ accurate?
  • Smills, on 10/12/2007, -10/+24I have Vista Ultimate x64 and i love it, and i especially love the speech recognition. I have not trained it once other than the tutorial and it very rarely has less than 95% accuracy. It really is impressive. I have already used it to write several documents and have found it much faster than typing.

    BTW: I submitted this story first, but I am not going to shout "DUPE". I hate people that do that. If it has been dug up then it is obviously by people who have not already seen it before. That is just how digg works. /rant
  • Avengelist, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21I set it up, and tried to get it working with Word, but no joy. It also doesn't like noisy environments. I saw some interesting typos with my daughter chatting away in the background.
  • tablelegs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Who the ***** tries to code with speech recognition? That's the like trying to eat cereal with ***** chopsticks.
  • Smills, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14@wacka
    XP's speech recognition was pretty much unusable. After training for hours you were lucky to get 50% accuracy. Also it had very limited interaction with the OS. Basically it was really difficult to use. Vista's is enourmously different, much more responsive, and in my opinion actually useful in various situations.
  • Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17so what you are saying droog, is you took a glance at it, and before really actually using it at all decided you didnt like it?
  • ProximaC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15and that is exactly the problem that has kept VR from becoming really useful, especially in an office environment. They do make great headset microphones that only pick up your voice, and filter out background sound though, and those help a lot.
  • Ramble, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15I tried this maybe about 5 months ago and it was pretty awesome.
    But talking to myself made me sound stupid and I prefer typing.
  • spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14A friend of mine injured his wrist and was unable to type comfortably for a few weeks. He bought Dragon Naturally Speaking to tide him over and was extremely impressed with the results. The most impressive feature was that it learned from its mistakes. For example, he lived near a city called Oshawa, and for a while when he said it the software would type "Joshua", but he corrected it 4 or 5 times and then it got it right every time!

    It's extra nice that Vista comes with this functionality built in. Dragon Naturally Speaking cost him something like $80 US.
  • xero9, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Except that it BLOWS on the Mac. I saw that video of the guy trying to code Perl with it, and while it was never meant for that, I was amazed at how well it would actually work for what it was designed for. Try doing the "Mac, tell me a joke" and see how many times you get past the " who?" part. I've only gotten it to work once.

    And BTW I am a Mac user, so don't think I'm just knocking OS X
  • BumbyKnuckles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I have been using this feature since i got my Ultimate copy of vista it works great but the other day someone put a post up detailing how it can be used with Vista MCE so i use it for that now and i must say walking into my house and saying play Heroes 4 just makes my day
  • spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Given the state of my keyboard you'd be forgiven for thinking I like to do the opposite and eat with my keyboard.
  • betterth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11It gets progressively better -- it sort of learns how you speak and when you make corrections, it remembers that that sound pattern equaled the new word, not the old one, so you'll find that once you train it, it's actually quite effective. I've used it to control my media center before when I couldn't find a wireless mouse and didn't want to sit all up on my TV.
  • Crash1337, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Good informative article.
  • Yeyui, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Speech recognition in windows in now new to vista. It may be better than previous versions, but Windows has had speech recognition for the office suite and some other compatible programs at least since the release of WIN2k. I won't argue that Windows had it first, but they are not exactly 'playing catch-up'.

    PS I am no fan of windows and have not so much as seen Vista in person yet. I just dislike misleading statements of any kind.
  • sid0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9phillipbock, you are coming to a sad realisation that you have simply been misinformed.

    As grogan said, if you don't buy DRM music, you won't see DRM.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I am writing this comment using voice recognition this is the first time I've used it on this computer.
    I used IBM software about two years ago that took 20 pages of training and it didn't work as well as this one does.

    I also logged in, and clicked remember me.

    Now I am going to click "submit comment" using my voice.
  • DeskFlyer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'll have to try this after drinking a 12-pack.
  • da5id, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8This might be slightly interesting if it were true, but as usual with many users, they feel free to comment about things which they know nothing about. For example the following words were dictated sequentially -- Jackson, Madison, Chicago, Gomez, Rodrigues, Rodriquez, Thompson, Saskatchewan, Ontario, 213-555-2056, Roberts, Oberlin, Gore, Bush, Pelosi, EU, Pakistan, Pakistani, Cheryl, Syria, Estonia,, tsunami, CNN, CBS, ABC, CIA, FBI, NSA, AT&T, TNT, nitroglycerin, DNA, ribosomes, Celsius, Kelvin, Fahrenheit, deoxyribonucleic acid, nucleotides, phosphate groups, protein biosynthesis, methyl group, bacteria, plasmids, transcription, DNA replication, Parkinson, Todd, Ethel, Ruth, Bruce Townsend, Chad Johnson, Charlie Chitwood,, etc., ad nauseam. All of these words are in the speech recognition dictionary and just waiting for you to dictate them. The complete works of Shakespeare comprises 20,000 words. The dictionaries of contemporary speech recognition engines are upwards of 200,000. And you can add any word you want. And the words that you add take precedence over the existing words so the words you use most often are less likely to be misrecognized.

    If you actually demonstrated a familiarity with speech recognition, then your criticisms might have some validity. Otherwise, it's just somebody with a keyboard and Internet connection talking out of their arse.
  • uuhclem, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Rubbish, Mac has had a 'speakable items' folder that contained applescripts. While cute, it could hardly be compared to Vista where not only can you dictate (at normal speech speed), you can navigate the web, control the operating system, and move back and forth between these paradigms. It actually makes you not want to touch the keyboard just to see the thing in action. While it certainly takes getting used to (and makes mistakes) if the mac had anything comparable people would be shouting it from the rooftops. I find MS comes up with great stuff, but cannot promote themselves effectively.
    (written from vista running on my macbook pro)
  • spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Speech is around 200 words per minute, to keep up typing that fast you need to use something like a Stenotype and type in shorthand.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
  • ProximaC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"It works better if you’re speaking with a German accent"

    I'm picturing Hitler screaming at his computer...
  • sid0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Features? Take some time to go through these:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
  • spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8The first thing you should do is run the training session. It shows you several paragraphs of text which you dictate into the mic. It takes about 10 minutes. After that the accuracy is very impressive. The only thing I found frustrating to get used to was having to say "comma" and "period" and stuff like that.
  • darkstorm777, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Exactly.

    Now while I do understand that this particular article is geared more towards the Word document dictation. But seriously. Thats a VERY hard task to accomplish. Hell in Chicago alone there are 2 different dialects (Northside/Southside) Vista is a world wide release. Its the advances in technology we should be focusing on, not the 101% (an obvious goal though) accuracy.

    What I see this useful for is the opening of Applications. searching, and note taking, not to edit articles, or to write books. It gives us an additional tool, its not meant to replace it (yet) Trust me, when something it ready to replace something as old as the keyboard....you will defiantly hear about it. People will be screaming it from the mountain tops.

    I don't think VR is there to make everything under the sun easer. I think; at its functional peak that its at right now, its just a new way to do old menial tasks.

    Take it for what it is, and not what the hype wants you to believe.
  • spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I played with speech rec in Windows 3.1. It was a third party program but it still worked... sorta. I remember saying "couch potato" to open the calculator.
  • tonyr1988, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10@smills

    Now they just need to incorporate grammar recognition....
  • sid0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Did you train it?
  • sid0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ridiculous. IIRC MS voice had word by word dictation. Vista can recognise natural speech.
  • ABadInAlbany, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7The technology is trainable, dialect doesn't matter (much).
  • geoken, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I've never had an IM conversation that felt as natural as speaking. A good 50% of my IM conversations end with "just call me on my phone".
  • MrUnderbridge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"A friend of mine injured his wrist and was unable to type comfortably for a few weeks."

    Tell him to take it easy next time, or at least switch up occasionally.
  • grimfandango, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6wow, that's pretty incredible...especially for those who have mental or physical difficulties
  • WATYF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5wrong thread. digg me down
  • reiner15, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I haven't tried this on my desktop yet, but if it's anything as accurate as my windows mobile speech then i'm set.
  • zmigliozzi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If anyone says they stole this from apple... seriously...
  • SpacemanSpiff, on 10/12/2007, -13/+17Digg down. I just posted the same link as cfelde. Watch the video...you can't fake that kind of funny.
  • Darcy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes we know, the mac has had speech rec since before Noah built the ark. If you had bothered to read the other comments you would have known that this has been pointed out a few dozen times already. Nobodies saying speech recognition is new, what they are saying is speech recognition in vista is a big step forward and unlike the VR built into Apples OS 8, 9, 10, Vista's VR is actually both usable & useful. Maybe you should give it a try and let us know how it compares to the macs speech rec.
  • da5id, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5You are probably one of those people who complained about color monitors -- what's the matter with plain green text he whined.
  • grogan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Speech is around 200 words per minute, to keep up typing that fast you need to use something like a Stenotype and type in shorthand."

    Yes, you can talk faster than you can type, but the actual act of typing is not the limiting factor. The limiting factor is the rate at which you can actually come up with the words. So if you are just writing down what someone is saying, as is typically the use of Stenotype, you can type at 200 words per minute. On the other hand, if you are writing an e-mail, it will be just as easy to type as it is to speak for most people.
  • sid0, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7I'd like to see you get out of my block list.
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