Speech

Another new feature featured throughout Office 10 is the inclusion of Speech. You can dictate text, make direct formatting changes, and navigate menus using speech and voice commands: a dream has come true with this version of Office. Microsoft at last offers its lazy customers a way to write letters or documents without typing on the keyboard (for those of you who still don’t know where the K letter on the keyboard you should really consider using speech recognition right now!). 

At the moment speech is currently available for U.S. English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese and has some compatibility issues with some sound cards. As well as the speech function though there is also the ability to translate words in their document (available languages are determined by language dictionaries that are installed) or to access a translation service on the Web: a good point for workers that have to produce documents in different language. This service provides entire document translation as well as additional languages.

Speech Toolbar

Speech Recognition wizard

Speech could have been an excellent addition to the Office XP suite, but unfortunately it may well prove unusable and time consuming for many people, despite aiming to do the opposite. Not only that, but also most other languages are not able to use the speech feature apart from the United States which tends to make it a pointless feature to most of us, and this is a real shame as when it works, it works very well.