speech recognition software - Win/Xp

hi everyone,

i want to setup an old computer for my Grandfather, its nothing fancy just an old first gen Pentium4 running Win/XP (sp3) i just want to load some Music & a few movies onto the machine & of course route it through his tv so he has it all there ready to go, but seeing as my Grandfather is pushing 85 & (sight going) he doesn't know the first thing about computers & would get incredibly frustrated at trying to perform something we take for granted.

so thinking about trying to just dumb it down to the bare essentials he would need - movies & music & make it voice controlled eg

*computer in sleep mode*

*Grandfather* "Computer wake up"

*computer wakes up*

*grandfather* "play some music"

*computer plays music*

very basic but you get my drift, i know it sounds like i have watched to much Star Trek (never!) but surly there has be to be SOMETHING out there that can do this job seeing as it has been in countless sci fi & non sci fi films & tv since TV was made! (all inventions & products start with an idea!)

 

There is one that has been advertised on TV lately and I found at least one good review for this software.
Supposedly, this works with Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 11

Another is e-Speaking

Sorry, but I have no experience with any of these.

 

Voice recognition does work surprisingly well. As far back as Win 98SE I was using it regularly for creating text documents and getting close to 100% accuracy. However for your grandfather it wouldn't be practical mainly due to the need to use a microphone, which means having to wear a headset or having one hand tied up holding one. Background noise, including from the TV itself can also affect performance. And there are always those situations where you have to resort to keyboard or mouse - voice can't do everything.

Before spending a lot of time on this I would recommend you first set up this old comp with his favourite films and music and connect it to his TV just to gauge his reaction to it all. Many older ppl, while marvelling at what it can do, do find it all a bit much.