Coolest Gadgets

According to Microsoft, Windows Vista contains hundreds of new features including advanced speech recognition software. Vista’s speech recognition software can be “trained” to understand a user’s voice, activate commands in any Windows application, and to enable voice dictation. It also supports multiple languages. Sounds great right? Well maybe not. What until you see this video of Vista’s speech recognition in action.

The guy giving the demo says the following into his microphone:

• Dear Mom
• fix aunt
• delete that
• select all

This is how Vista’s speech recognition software translated it:

“Dear aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all”

Of course the audience attending the live demo broke out into a fit of laughter. Wouldn’t you? Jim Goldman from CNBC called the fiasco a “live product demonstration gone awry.” He then went on to say the following, “Microsoft calls it voice recognition. But after today’s major technical glitch, you and I might want to refer to it as voice wreckognition.”

Windows Vista ships sometime in early 2007. Hopefully that will give Microsoft enough time to work out some more kinks.

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