FreeSpeech 2000

PHILIPS HAS CONSIDERABLY REWORKED their first foray into the U.S. speech recognition market. But they are still stuck in the metaphor of the old-fashioned mechanical dictation units which reduces usability for those people who do not have such a backround. The metaphor hampers their product's utility in the corporate marketplace. The product has the least accuracy of the four desktop speech recognition products reviewed for 1999.

Synopsis:

Pros: Interesting SpeechMike, multi-lingual recognition, included SDK.

Cons: Multi mode command structure, clumsy correction process, very weak macro facility, mediocre accuracy

Installation and Initial Enrollment

You may begin using Philips' FreeSpeech without any training, but accuracy is improved with the standard initial training session which lasts about twenty minutes.

The training text, consisting of tutorial material and sample business letters, is a bit dry. Our users found it tiresome to repeat these when training for multiple devices such as a headset microphone, the SpeechMike dictation device, and a palm recorder.

Of all the products, fixing misrecognitions during the enrollment training session took the longest with Philips.

You are here>: Introduction
More: Ongoing Training Process...
More: Dictation into the WordPad Applet...
More: Text to Speech Performance...
More: Integration With Other Applications...

 

 
 
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