IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Edition :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Fantastic

2004-04-20
I see on this site that most people did not like this product. Well, I did. At first it was a dissapointment, but after I did lots of voice testing and corrections, it was great. No hands are needed and it is relitivley fast. Great Buy.

Crashes, crashes, crashes - DO NOT BUY

2004-04-17
Installed ViaVoice 10 in Windows XP Pro...

And sometimes it opens and sometimes it doesn't. Mainly doesn't.

Then I find this...via Google..

Problem:

After launching Dragon or ViaVoice and clicking a link in one of the menus, the system locks up or freezes. Other symptoms include Dragon NaturallySpeaking's Select-and-Say or ViaVoice's dictation and commands fail in Microsoft Office XP applications, such as Word and Microsoft Outlook.

Cause:

Microsoft Office XP's "Alternate User Input" installs a background process called CTFMON.exe which can interfere with Dragon or ViaVoice. The following information was taken from the Microsoft website:

"...Ctfmon.exe monitors the active windows and provides text input service support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative user input technologies...."

And you can get NO, repeat, NO, help from ScanSoft.

DO NOT BUY!

do not buy it if you have mcafee internet security soft ware 2004-04-15
IBM viavoice usbpro has major conflict issues with mcafee internet security suite(6.)Ibm redirects you to scansoft that has a lousy support which is charged to your credit card after the first free query;their online knowledge database is sparse and the tech personell seem to be reading their answers from algorhythms with background knowledge barely above the average customer's; Mcafee has a more extensive online database but no free tech support phone calls; problems of conflict between the softwares were related to TCP/IP port (viavoice apparently works through an open port) and to speech engine conflicts;none could resolve these issues;such issues in my opinion can only be resolved by interdisciplinary programmers;short of this the choice is one software verses the other

Terrible Support - Many Installation Problems 2004-03-03
An earlier ViaVoice installation 3 years ago went fine and the product was pretty useful and accurate enough for my purposes.

ViaVoice version 10 however has been a nightmare. I still have not been able to install it on a Win2K-SP4 computer. I am a fairly advanced computer programmer/systems person with 20+ years of experience.

Support is virtually non-existent from Scansoft. My 30 days of free support from IBM where I purchased the product has not been honored. All support has to come from Scansoft.

Great features, if you can access them. I am seriously thinking of demanding my money back. Washington State has some very consumer friendly laws regarding "Fitness for Purpose", one more reason I am grateful to live in the Northwest.

Incompatible with Word 2003 2004-01-04
I have used ViaVoice Ver10 Pro USB for a little over a year with great results. On a fast computer system it keeps up with you almost no matter the speed of your speaking. It does occassionally crash. There seems to be a problem with it writing back to memory. IBM was unable to find the problem. It had done this on other computers as well. I've used it with MS Office XP Pro on my old computer. I upgraded to a new computer with MS Office Small Business Ed 2003 only to find that ViaVoice is not compatible with the components. I spent $9.95 in tech support only to be told that! They said that they plan to put that info on their website(Scansoft is now the tech support for this product). To date they haven't. Guess, they want to sell as many copies as possible before they make a patch. Anyway, if you're planning to use this with Office 2003 or higher it will not work and tech support will do nothing to help you except take your money.
Update: 5/5/2004: I contacted ScanSoft to find out if they are making a patch to make it compatable with Word 2003. Their standard answer is "We're working on it." If you go to their website you will find that they still haven't put in a disclaimer that it doesn't work with all Word editions. It just says that it does work with Word. I wonder how many refunds they are giving out for false advertising? I'm also surprised that the major PC magazines haven't picked up on this.

Good program 2008-06-27
I just purchased viavoice. I read what other users mentioned about usability. It is like any new program. It involves a learning curve. I had my program running on XP. I disabled security during installation and re- enabled after installation.. You just have to tweak it for your system. I called tech support and they told me I should have brought Dragon. I decided to stay with viavoice and after voice test the software recognizes your voice. It is a good program. EIGHT OUT OF TEN.

Poor effort 2007-02-11
I have had ViaVoice 10 for several years. I finally had to uninstall it because it ran so slow, meaning the whole computer. I use technical terms and it was so complicated to get the words recognized by the software. It was like being in training with it for ever. Then a week ago I installed Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred. This is so great. It runs fast and it is simple. The nice thing is I am able to use my headset mic from ViaVoice which is USB and it is smooth as silk and extremely fast and accurate. As for building a vocabulary, where with ViaVoice you have to pronounce each word, Naturally Speaking simply scans all your emails and documents and pulls the words into your vocabulary. I have a brain injury so it takes me awhile to get it figured out. I guess I need to do the tutorial a few times, but that is maybe 30 minutes a time. I had no problem registering my copy. It went smooth as silk. It is one of the best things I ever got. A friend first told me about Naturally Speaking several years ago and how his son was writing these great papers for school in no time at all, and I was crawling around with ViaVoice. I should have taken a hint too, as all of the colleges and universities around here have used Naturally Speaking for years and years. A much better product.

If ViaVoice did not have IBM's name on it no one would even pay any attention to it. Plus v.10 is old. Forget it. Let it go. They simply did not develop it to the extent necessary. But Nuance did, and so much the better, man! Get Naturally Speaking but you might need a better microphone. The one that came with mine was junk, but I did not need it and I got a great price on eBay. Can't be happier that I got the sense to get rid of ViaVoice. It was like dragging around a ball and chain. Naturally Speaking is like freedom--at last! Light is coming through the windows as the ease of using it and its effectiveness makes itself better each day I use it.

VIA VOICE USB EDITION 2007-01-13
I wondered why there were so many bad reviews and so many good reviews,for this now excellent product, Usually when you get one stars then something was set up wrong so we bought it, because we had the standard edition for one of my other computers and I really liked it, I just needed to do some files off of MP3 files on the computer (transcription of college clagsses)
and I think I know the answer to the bad reviews.
When I installed Via voic (We have the USB edition) we had horrible trouble with the recognition and it didn't even act as good as the standard edition (We installed it on a newer laptop running XP)
and it took long time for words to be typed as if it was really working,and thinking much too hard. I tried different mikes, USB and everything and it would not do well.

So I used Cool Edit to see what the matter was, the mic sensitivity was almost off!

Evidently when the program installs it uses whatever mike sensitivity you have set and xp comes with the mike almost OFF! and leaves it, while Dragon naturally speaking must set it appropriately.

This is easily fixable.

I turned the mike to half gain and it was blasting into the red and did poorly, so I turned it to 1/8 to 1/4 on, and it has been doing excellent!

go to START/control panel/sound and click on microphone setup and advanced. there is a super amplification switch, turn that off, then turn the mic cgain to about 1/3. the best is when I plug it right into the speaker and mike ports in the Laptop.

Runs GREAT!

I bought both via voice PRO and dragon poreferred.

You dont need the USB mike just plug it into the laptop directly with the above mike settings
GREAT!

I like how via voice functions better but my college age boy likes dragon cause he can train it a bit more detailed.

If I speak normally it hits all of my words and even some scientific terms and is great at new words. It is better than previous editions and very little correction needed its either all good or it wont type hardly anything. We installed dragon and I like this one better, for minimal fuss and training.

BUT HERE IS THE FINAL SAY

VIA VOICE installs right from the hard disk and you can run it right away. No PERMISSIONS REQUIRED! Just like the early days of computing when we were treated like humans. I don't cheat and steal I always buy a specific copy for each computer, because that is what I would want others to do to me. If I don't like the program I trash it
Dragon, you have to have an internet connection, and we had to go to the library to even activate it, that was no fun. I have had other programs that need activation and some are reasonable, and some treat you like a criminal.
About Dragon, if you computer crashes you have to authorize, and some programs you can't reinstall, I have had to buy 3 dopies of auto-tune already tough nuts, and I cant wait for a competitor to come along.

I dislike all programs that need hand holding on the internet, I like privacy and I don't like to be treated like a crook. I like to be able to run programs without getting permission from engineers who are trying to go to pay per use programming on the internet. The latest programs don't even belong to you, you just have permission to run them for a while till they discontinue it, then you'd have to buy the next version. This has happened to me already.
And I don't appreciate it.
Soon you will not be able to even run your computer without internet, and continuous payments. The new operating systems won't even run programs unless they have been OK'd by the big boys.
. Well, we dont like or appreciate that, and we son't support them either..

I still have my original disks from Office 2000,and 2002. Office 2003 Is too controlling I never bought it and it wont run with via voice USB another good reason to buy
Via voice, they are all right in my book.

Word L&H translating, cool edit and now via voice and I have a lot of money invested in windows 98 SE and it runs just fine. I love how you can hit alt-ctrl-del and stop all spyware dead in its tracks, I here vesta will have shadowed memory that will allow programs to run and even your operating system won't be able to detect it or something like that. Count be out.
Using Norton Ghost I can have a pristine system up and running in ten minutes all new installed.
I will stay with that, it can crash every 2 years so what. Start fresh.
the only program that sucks is an auto tuning program, which I have had to buy several copies already cause they dont allow you to reinstall once you crash and I still need it for a few weeks. Pain in the behind.
and can affordbelieve when your disk crashes, soon I will trash that program too.

Any way VIA VOICE ROCKS and it will be installable for the next 100 years even if the company goes bankrupt and it works WELL!

thanks!
(I think I will buy an extra copy just for a backup before they go to internet monitored run time, I will still be dictating just fine for the next 8 years.

IBM Viavoice 10 Badly Broken 2005-12-13
Does not work with XP SP2, McAfee security Suite and/or Office 2003. Terrible. I spent good money on this and the support is non existent and no fixes on the horizon.

Avoid like the plague.

Software ok, support, terrible 2004-09-24
If I were going to rate the software alone, it would be a four. However, you had better not have any problems with it, as the support is non-existent. When I reluctantly agreed to pay for support and asked for help, they never got back to me.