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| Software Author: |
VITO Technology |
| Product: |
VITO Voice2go |
| Cost: |
$29.95 |
| Reviewed By: |
Russ Terrell |
| Rating: |
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How many times have you talked to your PPC and hoped it would react? VITO Voice2go gives you that voice
response capability. VITO Voice2go gives you the ability to take almost total control of your PPC with
your voice. There are some caveats to ?total control? though. You?re limited to the programs in the
Programs folder and system operations. You can add macros to perform other functions.
After you load the program for the first time you need to record your Magic Word and words for correct and
wrong. Select each item, tap record and then say the word you want associated with it. Once you set those
up you can move on to the programs and system functions you want to perform by voice response.
As a final step, if you have a Phone edition PPC or a Bluetooth phone you connect to, you can set up your
contact list. This way you can dial your phone with your ?Magic Word? and the contact name. As with the
other items, you have to record each one. In this example you would record your contact Home with the
spoken word ?home?. If you get an incoming call, the program will announce who the incoming call is from
in your own voice.
Macros are a hard thing to explain and almost as hard to record. To record a macro, tap on new, then
record. The process of recording the screen taps is hard to explain. You need to tap on the Tap button
then tap the action you want. The problem I ran into was, what you want to tap might not be in sight.
After an email with the company they told me to tap where the icon, button or whatever will be. It takes a
lot of trial and error before you figure out how to use it. One mistake and you need to start over. Read
the online manual for some help. You can also check their forum. I was disappointed that you can?t setup
very complex macros and you can?t edit them once you?re done. Once you?re done recording the macro, you
assign the voice command to it like all the other functions and programs.
There are several options you can set. You can set the program to start when you reset you PPC. I found
when the program was running it would sometimes detect background noise as the ?Magic Word?. Because the
program is active in the background listening for the ?Magic Word?, it?s going to drain your battery fast.
You can make the program only active to listen if the PPC is using external power. The final option is to
detect incoming calls. With this option on, you need to define the COM port.
The program allows you to backup and restore the voice tags. This is very useful if you find your PPC hard
resets from time to time.
Vito Technology will be offering other skins for the program. The only time you will see the skin is when
it?s in Recognition mode. Currently they offer only the one skin.
To activate the program, you can select it from the programs menu; if you have associated it with one of
the PPC buttons, you can press that button or it will be running on reset if you sent that option. The
little microphone indicates that the program is listening. If you tap on the microphone, you can start
recognition without saying the ?Magic Word?, turn listening off and on, and select the settings.
Using the program is easy. Say your ?Magic Word?. In my case the word is ?go?. The recognition screen will
come up. You will have about 5 seconds to say the word for what you want to do. An example would be if I
said Internet, it will start Internet Explorer. If the program recognizes the word, it will repeat it and
you need to answer with your correct or wrong word. I found about 90% of the time it recognized the word
correctly. Sometimes it would fail to recognize the word at all and other times it would repeat the wrong
word. You will know that it failed to recognize the word, because it plays a very long and weird sound
effect.
Conclusion:
The voice recognition is very good. It is language independent, so no matter what your dialect is, it will
recognize what you are saying. The program is more suited for use with a Pocket PC Phone than just a PPC.
You do not need a Phone edition PPC to use the software though. The setup is simple, but a little time
consuming. You have to speak a word for each application you?re starting. Be sure when you?re done that
you backup the voice tags.
One of the things I didn?t like was the fact that it only picks programs out of the programs folder. I
found the best way to add links to other programs was to create a folder in windowsstart menuprograms
called voice and add shortcuts to the programs you want.
Another thing I didn?t like was having to say the ?magic word? to start the recognition process. You can
map a button to start the program like you do with Microsoft Voice Command.
I found the sound effects very annoying and added a delay to the function of the program. I also found it
annoying to have the program repeat my request and wait for a yes or no. It does default to ?yes? after a
short delay.
Over all I wasn?t overly excited about the product. I think its best suited for a Phone edition PPC. I
would highly suggest trying the program before you buy it. My understanding is that WM 5.0 will have Voice
Command built in. If you?re planning on buying a new PPC or upgrading to WM 5.0, you might want to wait
and see what the model offers for voice response.
Availability
Handango
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