On 21 Jan 2002, at 12:06, Heidrun Schröder wrote:

> Hi there everyone,
> with a bad pain in my wrist I am a bit in trouble typing my
> e-mails these days. Heard there are dictation programs and would
> like to try such out. Unfortunately don't have a small fortune to
> spend on one that will work really great, so would be pleased if
> the one or other of you might be able to tell me about a
> reasonably good one that is freeware. I tried the "usual" freeware
> download sites and could not find anything for free.
> TIA
> Heidi Schroeder

  There used to be three main contenders in this field, each of which
offereed several bundles in the range of $40 to $160 or so:

1.  IBM "Via Voice"

2.  Dragon "Naturally Speaking"

3.  L&H (Lernat & Houghspie -- spelling?)

  Then L&H bought Dragon -- and then it went the way of Enron.

  I don't recall all of the details.  It turned out that some high
executive of L&H was indicted or something for a false passport, and
turned out to be the main guy behind German spy agency and Interpol
efforts to build a computer voice-recognition-based wiretap system.
"License fee advances from third parties" turned out to be covert-
operations funds laundered through undeclared wholly-owned
subsidiaries.  It was all a big scandal, particularly in Europe.

  As far as I know, L&H did actually have a working product.  So did
Dragon -- you might still be able to find it somewhere.
  Two years ago, the experts I was working with seemed to be pretty
impressed with the IBM offering, and as far as I know, you should
still be able to buy that.

Dave Gillett

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