Vista Speech Recognition Turn Off

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Control your PC with these 5 speech recognition programs. Dragon has long ruled supreme over the landscape of speech recognition—but no more. Simpler or less expensive (if not quite as powerful) options are carving out little fiefdoms. The more choices, the better, too, given that using voice commands can stave off or reduce repetitive strain injuries.

The spoken word also suits some projects better than typing. They were tested under pretty rugged conditions, too: my native Scottish brogue, and my German accent honed by 1. Wuerzburg. While none was quite able to slay the powerful Dragon, they could still be useful for many tasks.

I thought I was going to detest it, but I came away impressed—especially considering it’s free, and you already have it on your Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 PC. Click the option that pops up, and a window will open where you can enable the feature, as well as read a short text to give Windows an idea of what your voice is like. You can also access the feature through the Control Panel.

Once everything is set up, a small status box will pop up. You’ll use that to switch Speech Recognition on and off.

4 stars "Far and away the most fun speech recognition out there" April 26, 2009. 737NG Audio Ground School for iPad, iPhone and iPod. Android Devices. Flight Crew Assistant Series. Interview by Liz Matthews, AmeriCorps VISTA Alumni Outreach Team Lead You’re a United States Air Force veteran, you served two terms with AmeriCorps VISTA, and now.

You can tell Windows Speech Recognition to pretty much do anything on your PC. It can open browsers (including new tabs), apps, as well as Microsoft Office documents.

Once you have a document open, you can dictate text and it will instantly appear there. When you are finished, just say “stop listening” and it will go to sleep, waiting for you to wake it up again.

I found the accuracy level dipped when I dictated long texts into a MS Office doc. Nor did it respond well to my German accent, so other accents may stymie it as well. That’s Google Voice Search. Google Voice Search is available only on the Google Chrome browser, which works on multiple platforms. Assuming you have a microphone set up on your PC (perhaps in a headset or webcam), click the microphone icon.

The first time, it asks you to grant Google permission to access your microphone. When you’ve done that, it invites you to speak your search terms. It recognizes speech almost instantly, and what the computer thinks you’ve said will pop up on the screen.

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Your search results also appear quickly, without any need to click a mouse. A moment later, the search results appear. I gave it 1. 0 search terms and said them in my regular (Scottish) accent as well as English with a German accent. It stumbled on only a few occasions, and that was when I said them in my native accent.

However, that art comes at a steep price: The Home version of Dragon Naturally. Speaking costs $7. Premium currently costs $1. Then the application loads a bar at the top of your screen.

In that bar is an orange microphone logo, which indicates that Dragon is currently not listening. To start the application, just say “wake up,” and the orange logo will turn green. This is where you see what Dragon can do. Anywhere you find a text box, Dragon will enter any text you tell it to. It can write your emails for you, perform Google searches, post to Facebook and Twitter, and launch Web browsers. You can even tell it where to place the cursor. You can open the usual word processing apps such as Microsoft Word and Notepad, and begin dictating your text.

It gives you a menu of possible other words and lets you choose the one you want. Once you’re finished, order Dragon to close the file, print it, save it, or open another document. For example, the user profile bar does not fit nicely at the top of the browser, so it looks messy and out of place. It also can’t launch websites, open new browser tabs (like Windows Speech Recognition does), or close apps. According to a Nuance spokesman, the Rich Internet Application Support browser add- on “allows you to control more of your Internet browsing using speech.”  This sounds good, but in my experience, it crashed frequently and slowed my browser down. You can uninstall it just like any other plugin—so if your browser starts crawling like an arthritic tortoise, you know what to do. A Dragon spokesman has assured me that the CSM can be uninstalled without any side effects to Dragon itself—but of course, you won’t get your software updates if you do that.

It gives you the chance to dictate your text, then it gives you a few basic options for what to do with that text. For those who prefer minimalism, that may be enough.

Of course, it also requires Google Chrome. Simply click the green microphone icon on the right and dictate your text. When you’re satisfied with the text on the screen, click the down- arrow button to move it into the lower box, where the options reside. If you want the text translated, simply click the button and choose the translating language. Talk. Typer automatically opens a new browser tab with your text inserted into Google Translate. Even when I spoke clearly, it tripped up on some of the words, and I wasn’t exactly dictating rocket science.

The first is that you can use the app to control PC commands and games with your voice. And if Tazti doesn’t have the command you need, you can create it (and another 2. It helps you control games, open apps, and even use the command line. If you don’t need a command, you can edit it or delete it entirely. You can even use the commands “click” and “double click” to remove the need for using the mouse.

It’s not that kind of voice recognition. Developer Voice Tech Group acknowledges that other products profiled here are much better at dictation, so the company decided to focus its efforts elsewhere. The fact that you can control important parts of Windows with Tazti makes it worthy of inclusion here, even if it doesn’t offer dictation. If you are going to use speech recognition on a frequent basis, it would be worth investing $7. Dragon. You’ll be amazed at how much you enjoy dispensing with the keyboard.