Edison, New Jersey-based Verbex Voice Systems Inc has a new continuous speech recognition system, Listen for Windows 1.2, as a software-only product. It runs on any 80486 running at 66MHz system or faster, 33MHz 80486 with Overdrive processor or Pentium machine equipped with sound boards. Bundled at no additional cost are Lotus SmartSuite 2.0 and 2.1, Microsoft Office Suite 3.0, WordPerfect 5.2, Corel Draw! 4.0, Asymetrix Compel 1.0, Autodesk AutoCAD 12.0, Microsoft Publisher 2.0, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11. In addition, independent software vendors are said to be offering ready to use speech interfaces for additional Windows applications, including WordPerfect 6.0 and Aldus Pagemaker 5.0 Pagemaker (Standard and Pro). It is claimed to recognise sentences and phrases spoken rapidly or slowly without pauses between words, enabling users to speak to their computer in a more natural way – if anyone can feel natural talking to a stupid machine. The speech recognition learns an individual user’s voice and it is claimed that users can train a typical application in under half an hour. Listen for Windows 1.2 is compatible with Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum, Microsoft Windows Sound System and many others and available with either a headset microphone or a desk-monitor mount microphone for $140 or without for $100.
