Setting up Vista speech recognition

GBM’s resident speech evangelist, John Gannon, has challenged some of us to use various the speech recognition tools to complete our daily work.   I have volunteered to use Vista’s speech recognition.

The first time that you use speech recognition in Vista you’ll be guided through a wizard to configure your microphone and a tutorial that will teach you the basics of using speech recognition.

There are two fundamental functions you can use an speech for a in Windows Vista.   The first is dictating text, and the second is issuing commands.   The tutorial will teach you enough to get you started with both of these.

When you launch the tutorial you’ll be greeted with the welcome screen below.

You can run through the entire tutorial using only speech recognition.

As you progress to tutorial you will be told what to say as the concepts are explained.

A number of times throughout the tutorial you will be told to say “what can I say”.   And this will show the dialogue shown below.  

You’re also taught the basics of correcting tech say you have dictated.

Whenever you are dictating to the computer, Windows Vista is learning from your voice.   This includes during the tutorial.

You will also learn that you can use speech recognition to navigate your computer and launch applications.

All told, the process is running at setting up speech recognition in Windows Vista is not only pretty straight forward, it will also give you the basic skills you need to get started.

I have dictated this entire post without any further training other than the tutorial.   While the process has not been perfect it has actually been pretty good.

I’ll report back as the speech challenge progresses.