It actually works quite well. The key is to spend time at the beginning to train it to your voice and to correct each error. Now its not going to be like Star Wars (Scotty: "A keyboard, how quaint.") but it works and has greatly reduced my Carpal Tunnel wrist pain.

Not quite 5 stars, I am a tough critic, but worth the money and I am using it daily in my work.

33 of 36 found the following review helpful:

ViaVoice - very disappointing  Dec 21, 2004
By Steven L. Harrison
You don't get your money's worth with ViaVoice. At first, it seemed to work fine. Contrary to what the program is supposed to do, the more I used it, the worse it got. "Training" the software is extremely time consuming. However, I did this in hopes of improving its performance. Unfortunately, after spending all the time doing that, it was actually worse, not better. It has finally gotten so bad I cannot use the application at all. As I am dictating, it throws in random words which can't possibly have anything to do with what I am saying, some of them foreign. Dictate, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country," and you are likely to get "Avarice now is the Bois time for all good men to Gwendolyn." Help is impossible to find, and if you go to the IBM or ScanSoft site, you have to pay for it. Do not buy this software.

15 of 15 found the following review helpful:

A great invention!  Sep 10, 2005
By Melody A. Hadley
This is a great item. It is fun to use. It works very well for me. It is easy enough to set up. Then with patience and doing a little reading to help program it you can use it quite efficiently. And it is easy to transfer to another place like wordpad or emails. I found that I could send longer emails to my mom because all I had to do is speak my thoughts out loud!!! If your words dont come through clearly just do a little reading again.

11 of 11 found the following review helpful:

ViaVoice - easier than I thought.  Oct 15, 2005
By William A. Newman
This program works better than I expected. I only took a short time to get my voice set up. I didn't clock it, so I might have taken more time than I thought, but I was enjoying the experience, so It was not difficult. If you have trouble typing and want a great program to help you easily produce text documents, You'll love this program.

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:

Simply Amazing!  Mar 30, 2007
By Gary V. Carter
I can't understand why everyone doesn't use it. It didn't make my keyboard obsolete but it was a close call!

The delivery was quick and clean. The product comes with a headset which is the same price in my local store without the voice recognition system.

Once I read an interesting story into the computer so it could get used to my voice, the recognition was extremely good. I will never type 90 words a minute. I don't need to now. I have been speaking that fast all my life and now my computer listens and puts my words on the screen.

See all 13 customer reviews on Amazon.com