[MV] Re: ViaVoice vs. iListen

[Erika]

if expecting a reply, please note my signature, which contains
clarification of my peculiar circumstances.

>From: Phil Tanny [mailto:support at easy-hits.com]
>
>I'm getting the impression that ViaVoice may
>be a more accurate transcriber, but that iListen
>is much easier to work with, and is perhaps
>being developed more aggressively. 
>
>I'm about to purchase my first voice recog
>product, and am leaning towards iListen.
>Would love to hear from users who 
>have experience with both products,
>or strong opinions either way.

Hello  Phil,

Some points to consider:

ViaVoice is much more demanding of processor speed and particularly
RAM than iListen, but I personally find it much more intuitive to
use, as well as more accurate. N.B. I have not used the most recent
upgrade of  iListen.

Technical support for ViaVoice is a very difficult to to obtain, and
on their website they now mention that they will be charging a for
all technical support events, which, considering all the problems
which are increasingly plaguing ViaVoice as it apparently fails to
keep up with Apple's system software upgrades, could lead to
substantial expense. 

In contrast,  iListen's technical support is excellent, and they
have their own support and e-mail list for users which is
invaluable. They live and die by the quality of their product, so
iListen  is certainly being developed more aggressively; I don't
think ViaVoice has had an upgrade in over a year, although someone
please correct me if I am wrong (I am not including the recent bug
fix patch, which, on my machine at least, introduced more problems
than it solved).

I have it in writing from an Australian IBM ViaVoice support
technician that IBM have sold the rights to publish, sell, and
support the Via Voice family of products to Scansoft, the company
which makes Dragon Naturally Speaking.

I can see no mention of this on the  ScanSoft website, or the IBM
website, although the technician assures me that IBM announced it
publicly on their website in April. I have heard from another source
(not necessarily reliable) that IBM are getting out of the
individual user software business and concentrating on hardware and
software solutions for corporations. In this light the above makes
sense. One can only hope that Dragon continue to develop and improve
ViaVoice for OS X, although it is possible that it may come out
under a new name: Dragon Naturally Speaking for Mac OS X. it does,
however, hold a question mark over the future of ViaVoice, whilst at
the same time, perhaps explaining the dearth of technical support
and upgrades. Only time vill tell ...

best,
   
Erica Mackenzie
Crystal Waters Permaculture Village,
Conondale, QLD,
AUSTRALIA,

N.B. Please do not be surprised or annoyed if I fail to answer your post for some time. I have a fluctuating chronic auto-immune neurological condition, and am sometimes unable to use my computer for long periods (weeks or months). Be assured that I will reply as soon as I can - if I can. Please be tolerant. Also, IBM's ViaVoice Speech Recognition software can be held wholly responsible for all typo's, grammatical and other textual errors - it's capable of anything.
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