Poor Microsoft Office 2007

There is a bit of confusion as to what has happened to the speech recognition element of Microsoft Office 2007. Speech recognition was first introduced by Microsoft as a feature of Office XP in 2001. An improved version was then included with Microsoft Office 2003. It has been removed from the latest release, Office 2007, and is now part of Windows Vista. Speech recognition has been ‘promoted’ to become part of Windows Vista - Microsoft’s latest operating system. This means that the feature can be used across all compatible Windows applications and makes it a real competitor for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you are using Windows XP and you upgrade to Office 2007 you will lose the speech recognition feature. If you are determined to use Office 2007 then you must have a computer running Windows Vista to carry on using speech recognition. Unless, of course, you install a third-party solution such as Dragon naturallySpeaking or IBM ViaVoice. Speech Recognition is often incorrectly known as Voice Recognition.