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A great newly updated feature in Windows 7 This month Microsoft released the final build of Windows 7. In the IT world we call this RTM or released to manufacturing. Although not released to the public until Mid October, Microsoft allows their Gold partners like us to get Windows 7 today. Today I installed Windows 7 Ultimate onto my 1 ½ year old computer at home to see how it performs on older hardware. After doing many benchmark tests comparing Windows Vista to Windows 7, I’m happy to say that performance is greatly improved. Although there are many other changes to Windows 7 besides performance, this is usually one of the first things I like to test on a new operating system. In case you’re wondering what my system specs are, I am using an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 2.4 GHz with 4 GB of ram on an Intel DQ35JO motherboard on 120 GB Seagate SATA hard drive. Today I like to talk about a vastly improved feature in Windows 7 called Windows Speech Recognition. The first version of Windows Speech Recognition came out in Windows Vista. When Microsoft released it’s first version of the product with Windows Vista they had added this feature for disabled users. Although it was a good attempt at speech recognition it had many flaws and didn’t work so well. There’ve been many other attempts from various programs like Dragon and others for many years with this technology. As I’ve tested these products in the past I’ve found them difficult to use and long training periods required. Like Vista, there’s not really an installation for speech recognition in Windows 7. All you have to do is click the Start button, select All Programs, select Accessories, select Ease of Access, and then select Windows Speech Recognition.
To begin using this feature, like Dragon Naturally speaking, there’s no training involved and you may start using the application immediately. You only need to train it if you’re using a headset, or the ability to do document review or one of the advanced features of the speech recognition to control the operating system almost completely by voice. Windows 7 has improved the user interface for speech recognition. It’s not perfect by any means, but it does allow for users to interface with applications that are not specifically written for speech recognition with Microsoft Windows One great feature of this product is the cost, which is completely free. The performance for Windows 7 is showing to have a good response time. In the course of my testing the speech recognition of the applications it seems to be in the 90 percentile range. The speech engine and resources seemed to use almost half of what Dragon Naturally Speaking uses. Dragon Naturally Speaking typically uses anywhere from 113-170 MB of memory while in use, and costs over $200. There seems to be an obvious improvement here with System Resources as it pertains to speech recognition. The system seems to be able to seamlessly pick up between users. What this means is one person can be using the microphone at one point, speaking sentences and then the other person can switch to using the same headphones and mic and be able to be recognized properly by the speech software. This means for example, if you are on a conference call or a Live Meeting session, all of the various users voices could be translated to text. This is a great feature because you will not have to train the software for each voice. If you’d like to watch a short video of the updated feature, I have found a link on the Internet at http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Use-Windows-7-Speech-Recognition-158092479 That is pretty cool.
Another
improvement is the newly updated Windows Speech Recognition
Profile Tool, which allows the user to backup and restore
speech profiles, which is useful if you are training the
speech tool for more advanced use. The tool, Microsoft
informs, is designed to work with the next iteration of the
Windows-based OS, mainly Windows 7, but will work with
Microsoft’s current operating system, Windows Vista. Keep in mind that the Windows Speech Recognition Profile tool is a CTP – it will allow you to backup and restore your speech profile and it will work with 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) Windows versions; but it is not available in other languages apart from English. As I have composed this entire newsletter using my voice except for the one image I inserted and spent less than 10 minutes training Windows to my voice, I feed our customers might actually end up using this tool to improve productivity and not let it be another wasted icon on the Start Menu. Until next month, this is Lyle Epstein talking to my PC.
Lyle Epstein |
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