If you are using Microsoft Vista then you have a free "Speech to Text" program and you probably don't even know it. That's right, by just adding a microphone to your computer you can talk to your computer and write letters, send emails and do other things. Well, it's a little bit more complicated then that, but not much. I have been using it for a couple of days and I am very happy.

In the setup process you do some voice training with your computer. This training is a bit of a boring process, but it’s important an..d the program seems to work better after doing it. Speech recognition programs were developed several years ago and they have been a great aid to people who are handicapped. They are also great for people who never learned to type. But, I plan to use it as a quick way put together long paragraphs and web articles. Using this program I can lay out the article, at about 120 words per minute an then manually edit it. I have found that the errors that are left after I speak into the microphone are just about what happens when I type normally. I’m not a 100% accurate typist so no matter how I write any article I still have to edit it.

I’ve included a couple links that I found on the Internet and these links will show you the basic information for setting up the program. Like I said it comes free on every Vista operating system so why not give it a try.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2109975,00.asp

http://www.vista4beginners.com/Windows-Speech-Recognition-Guide

There is one more thing I wanted to add and that is that I wrote this article using the speech recognition program and as you can see it worked.

7-30-09 Update on "Speech to Text"

After fooling around with the Vista program I found a really good deal on a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred 10.  It was only $49 after rebates from TigerDirect so I bought it and it came today.  I installed the program and after a bit of computer voice training I was up and running, and I am impressed.  This program is performing almost flawlessly.  Now,  I have had very god results with both of these programs (Dragon is much better) and I think I know what the secret is.  I have been using a desk top Sony microphone on both programs. This is a very good microphone that I used in the past for podcasts.  I think it's very important that you use a really good microphone if you want your speech to text programs to work well and a good sound card in your computer.

Anyway after installing Dragon program I was up and running in no time at all and I was posting messages on the BBQ Forum.  Now I can you that I'm sold on the Dragon program.  I will be using it for a long time.  I can save a huge amount of time working on things that I do for a living, by using this program.  In the paragraph above I mentioned the fact that I got a really good price for this quality program but that deal is scheduled to end by the end of July, so if your interested in it you better contact them right away. You also get a good deal on this at Amazon.com, right now the price there is also $49 after rebates.

Once again after only about an hour I was using the Dragon program without a hitch and it was spelling better than I can manually.  I don't know what I can do with this program once I learn all the ins and outs of it   Just to be able to get it up and running this quick is really impressive. What I like about this Dragon program is that I can use it on everything that I tried to use it on so far.  I was posting messages to an Internet forum using this program and Firefox browser.  I was using the Firefox browser because it has a built-in spellchecker. This combination was working really fast.  Who knows what will happen, once I learn how to use this program really well.