**RARE** IBM VoiceType Dictation CD-ROM Vocabulary CD IBM PC DOS

Description: FREE and FAST Shipping within Australia IBM’s voice system Voice apps edge carves out user niche into mainstream By Thomas Hoffman If the positive market acceptance of IBM’s OS/2- based voice recognition systems is any indica¬ tion, then the company’s recent introduction of a Windows-based product should be equally appealingto doctors, lawyers and other profes¬ sionals accustomed to working in Microsoft Corp.’s graphical user interface environment. Last January, IBM began ship¬ ping an OS/2 version of its Person¬ al Dictation System, a PC-based speech recognition system capa¬ ble of identifying 32,000 words at a rate of 70 to 100 words per min¬ ute that costs less than $1,000. Earlier this month, IBM changed the brand name to VoiceType Dic¬ tation and began marketinga sim¬ ilarly priced Windows-based sys¬ tem. It also unveiled PCMCIA and Micro Channel Architecture cards that allow mobile professionals to use the software with their IBM PC Co. ThinkPad laptop computers. IBM’s VoiceType Dictation for OS/2 systems has found a solid niche among'doctors, lawyers and other professionals who are ei¬ ther engaged in high-volume word processing or cannot use a keyboard due to physical dis¬ ability. High praise For example, David McFarland, a former Hon¬ eywell, Inc. product manager who retired 20 years ago after his battle with multiple sclero¬ sis rendered him a quadriplegic, has been us¬ ing the OS/2-based system to run a computer bulletin board from his home in Monroe, Conn., since February McFarland, who has used a variety of speech rec¬ ognition systems for the past 10 years, said IBM’s VoiceType Dicta¬ tion product is the best he has ever used. “For straight keyboard replace¬ ment, IBM’s system is light-years ahead — and I’m no great fan of IBM,” McFarland said. Unlike most speech recognition systems, which often have trouble understanding dialects, the IBM system can be trained to recognize users’ ac¬ cents and speaking patterns. Users must first train the system to understand their pronunci¬ ations by reading a Mark Twain short story for 90 minutes. Each time the system is used there¬ after, it continues to learn how to interpret the user’s speech. The VoiceType Dictation systems boast a 97% accuracy rate, according to Howard A. Fields, director of marketing at IBM’s Speech & Pen Products division. The IBM systems also rely on trigram tech¬ nology, which enables them to statistically pre¬ dict what the third word in a phrase will be based on user speech patterns. That helps ac¬ celerate the recognition of like-soundingwords such as “to,” “two” and “too.” The system has been a boon for doctors such as Ted Fifer, a plastic and hand surgeon in Eff¬ ingham, Ill., who has been using the OS/2 sys¬ tem since August to generate progress notes for surgeries he has performed. Fifer, a loyal OS/2 user who has no plans to migrate to Win¬ dows, said he plans to examine the new PCMCIA cards. “Because I go to outlying clinics to visit pa¬ tients, [the PCMCIA feature] would enable me to have a portable dictation sys¬ tem to do correspondence on the spot,” Fifer said. Other OS/2 users planning to re¬ main loyal to IBM’s 32-bit operat¬ ing system would like to see the company add other enhancements to their software, such as a wider variety of specialized vocabulary. For example, Dr. Paul White, a general surgeon at Beth Israel Hospital in New York who has used the OS/2 version since April, said IBM’s emergency medicine vocabulary is not quite in sync with many words he is accus¬ tomed to using. “My system is about 90% accu¬ rate. If I was able to delete words, [the system] would probably go a lot faster with fewer er¬ rors,” White said. He added that he was other¬ wise satisfied with the software. H6

Price: 19.95 AUD

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End Time: 2024-02-20T00:19:18.000Z

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