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The e-Speaking program uses the standard Microsoft voice recognition system, but only the ones from XP and Windows 2000.

While the voice recognition system is a little outdated, it still works well. The voice training session seems to run a little long, but it’s definitely worth going through because completing the voice training drastically improves the accuracy of commands and dictation.

There are additional voice training modules too, and while some of them are also exceptionally long, we recommend completing them because they help the computer learn how you pronounce difficult and uncommon words. Obviously, it’s a bit much to sit down and do them all in one sitting, but over the course of a few days you should be able to burn through them. It’s really worth it if you plan to use the program extensively.

One of the problems we had with e-Speaking had to do with the toolbar. It’s a little sluggish and unresponsive at times, but opening the menu button offers you instant access to the commands list, which is invaluable to beginners trying to remember how to execute tasks.

There’s one more aspect of e-Speaking that isn’t really imperative to the overall user experience, but we can’t resist commenting on it. We’re speaking of the avatars for the computer voice that communicates with you. While the idea is simple enough, it’s more personable to have a face speaking to you than a disembodied voice, the execution is lacking. The e-Speaking avatars are all pictures of women who appear to be copied off the cover of an Esquire or Maxim magazine cover. When the computer speaks to you, the pixels around the mouth attempt to morph and animate to make it look as if this sultry vixen is talking to you. But in reality it just makes an already out-of-place image look deeply unsettling. Not only do you have a disembodied voice, but now it’s coming out of the horribly disfigured mouth of an airbrushed model. Actually, it’s more than unsettling, it’s just plain weird. Fortunately, the avatars aren’t necessary to the function of the program, so we recommend avoiding them altogether.