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 Curious about the people moderating your messages? Visit our staff web site: http://freepctech.com/staff.shtml