As of late, I have been experimenting with an essentially hidden feature that lies inside of Windows 8. It was present in Windows 7, but has been expanded upon in the more recent versions of Windows. This “hidden” feature is ‘Windows Speech Recognition‘. Much like Apple’s ‘Siri’ for their mobiles and tablets, W.S.R. allows for the user to control their device via speech. The user will say something, and then the computer will act accordingly, and is great for those who are lazy (like myself) who just want to get around their computer without having to reach to their keyboards, or mice. W.S.R. does not only control the computer, but it also allows for the user to dictate: take for example, a Word document to user wants to edit. Instead of having to type their document, said user can simply speak into their microphone and the program will attempt to type out what you had said to it. The program is actually surprisingly accurate and can understand many accents and dialects.
However, the program does not come without flaw. As much as you can navigate the computer basically, when it comes to more advanced operations, Windows Speech Recognition just does not cut the cheese. For example, the program does not have the ability to navigate webpages, which I think is its biggest problem. It only recognises control elements; meaning it can only use buttons, text fields and menus etc. that are part of the program’s interface itself, and it cannot recognise elements on a page. Considering I spend a lot of time on the internet instead of using actual applications, it isn’t really that useful. Sometimes, it’s just better off to use the mouse when navigating, which I believe is a shame.
Pros:
- Effortless navigation
- Dictation is very accurate and is good for those who cannot be bothered to type and just want to say what they want in their documents etc.
- Is very fast in analysing your commands/dictations.
Cons:
- Can be very tedious
- Does not support navigation of web-pages
- Depends heavily on the quality of your microphone; cheap ones, and ones that come with laptops for example may not be picked up well by the program.
I really like the idea of W.S.R. and in some case is very useful, however, in a lot of situations the program is just too tedious to use and you’d be better off just doing it the normal way.
Rating: A* A B C D E F… G?
c-grade: It’s pretty good.
The Computoguy 