Okay guys, here is my review on voice power.

I have been using voice power since March this year as an adjunct to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 Professional. I initially bought it to assist my wife to learn how to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I had previously bought her the SAY I CAN instructional videos on CD and while they were pretty good as an introduction, they were of limited use because she would forget the commands and would have to stop work to refer back to the video. I saw a write-up of voice power somewhere which gave it a pretty good rap so after checking out their website I decided to give it a try.

Have a look at their website at: http://www.voiceteach.com/voiceteach/voicepower.cfm
for info regarding the product

There are three links to instructional videos on that page which will give you a pretty good idea of what the program does and what the interface looks like. Those links are:

http://www.voiceteach.com/demo/VirtualTrainer.html

http://www.voiceteach.com/demo/Desktop.html

http://www.voiceteach.com/demo/vDirectories.html

I would describe voice power is being an interactive program that runs alongside whatever you are working on to extend the ability of NaturallySpeaking to control your programs and your computer. It has three main functions:

1) It is an interactive teaching tool providing lessons, instructional videos and At-A-Glance guides. There are 12 lessons which cover the following topics:

SPEECH RECOGNITION ESSENTIALS
1. Speaking to the computer
2. Revising and deleting text
3. Controlling the computer by voice
4. Web and e-mail
5. Correction, vocabulary and accuracy
6. Revue, quizzes and practice
USING SPEECH RECOGNITION
7. Dragon bar, microphone and maintenance
8. Copying and pasting, editing and formatting
9. Dictating alphanumeric text, numbers. Using Excel, PowerPoint and other programs
10. Maximising productivity
11. Legal and medical techniques
12. Voice power guides

The second function is as an interactive visual guide providing reference to the commands you need as you work. For example, say I am working in Firefox and give the command "show Firefox commands". The voice power window opens up on the right-hand side of my screen (the size of the voice power screen can be resized) taking up about a third or a quarter of the width of my screen. The screen list all the available commands alphabetically with the windows grouped (a-d) (e-m) (n-s) (t-z). Obviously, not all commands are visible at once, so to jump to another section for example, I say "show page down" or "show section 2 " I can see the following Firefox specific commands are available to me as I surf:

Bookmark all tabs
Bookmark this page
Bookmarks add ons
Bookmarks Mozilla Firefox
Bookmarks organize
Bottom of page
Caret browsing (toggle)
Clear private data
Close tab
Close window
Complete dot com address
Complete dot net address
Complete dot org address
Decrease text size
Delete autocomplete entry
Display bookmarks (toggle)
Display downloads
Display history (toggle)
File import
File send link
File work offline
Find again
Find link as you type
Find previous
Find text
Find text as you type
Full screen (toggle)
Go back
Go forward
Go home
Help report web forgery
Help about Mozilla Firefox
Help check for updates
Help contents
Help for internet explorer users
Help release notes
Help report broken web site
Increase text size
Manage search engines
Move tab left
Move tab right
Move tab to beginning
Move tab to end
New tab
New window
Next frame
Next tab
Normal text size
Open address in new tab
Open file
Open location
Page source
Previous frame
Previous tab
Refresh
Reload
Reload cache
Restore recently closed tab
Save page as
Select last tab
Select location bar
Select search engines
Select tab 1
Select tab 2
Select tab 3
Select tab 4
Select tab 5
Select tab 6
Select tab 7
Select tab 8
Stop loading
Tools page info
Tools add ons
Tools error console
Tools options
Tools page information
Top of page
View basic page style
View bookmarks toolbar (toggle)
View character encoding
View customize
View navigation toolbar (toggle)
View no page style
View page style
View sidebar
View status bar
View text size
View toolbars
Web search

If I go to another program such as Microsoft Word I just say "show Microsoft word commands" as I have office 2007 installed I say "show word 2007 commands" and the window will change to the word 2007 command set. If I get lost or don't know where a particular command is located I just say "show control centre" which puts me back to the main directory. Alternatively I can say "show index" to see a list of all the available commands.

The third main function of the program is to add programmed macros and commands to increase your control of the computer and various programmes. Those macros and commands display on the voice power window so you don't have to struggle to remember the thousands of commands.

So in a nutshell, apart from adding all those extra commands that are available to you, it provides an interactive reference to enable you to use those commands. The real beauty of the program is because the commands are in front of you or at worst only one or two voice commands away (assuming you have the change screens) your recall of commands is improved, your speed in editing and dictating is increased. While I am fully able-bodied and do not suffer from any injuries or conditions that prevent me from using a mouse or keyboard to control my computer, for someone who isn't as fortunate it allows them to effectively control the computer without a mouse.

So all in all, having used it now for about six months I find it invaluable. The only negatives I can find is that on my tablet PC which only has a 12 1/2 inch screen, the text can be a bit small as I had to keep the window fairly narrow so it doesn't take up too much of the screen. I have no such problem on a full-size desktop, particularly a widescreen. The only other negative I can find so far is that if I try to shut down Dragon, I have to remember the shutdown voice power first. of course, voice power does have a command to close down both NaturallySpeaking and voice power "shut down speech recognition"

Notwithstanding I have been using it almost daily in the past six months I am still discovering commands that I didn't know were there, as there are so many of them. As I was writing this review I just discovered two commands I didn't know were there:
"find voice power command" apparently this opens a find menu for the voice power window to enable you to search for any word or words in the current voice power window. just remember to spell your words using American spelling as I discovered when I went to search for the word "favourite." (I'm Australian and we use the British spelling)

The second command I just discovered is "show favorite commands" which enables you to build a list of your favourite commands and group them in one screen.

This has really been only a very basic overview of the program as I have found it. it is currently being revised to version 9.5 which will include updated commands for Office 2007 etc. This has been a free upgrade for existing users.

Unfortunately for me, as an existing customer I don't think I qualify for Ron's kind offer of a half price purchase for posting this review. Nonetheless, I thoroughly recommend it as a worthwhile enhancement to NaturallySpeaking.

Regards

Rob.