Speech recognition on the Fujitsu P1610

I'm getting more and more impressed with the Fujitsu P1610 each day.  Tonight I took the opportunity to play around with the speech recognition using just the one external microphone on the device.  Actually, I guess it's an internal microphone that I'm talking about. Fujitsu has incorporated some advanced array microphone technology into the P1610, even though it only has one microphone.  This technology is pretty cool and seems to enable a single microphone to perform much more like a dual array microphone.  I decided to give speech recognition using the Tablet PC recognition engine a try tonight and so far I am pleased with the results. 

The first thing that I did was to complete the basic voice training exercise that comes standard with the Tablet PC.  I would normally recommend that a user complete all of the training exercises up front to get the best accuracy possible but because I was short on time I decided to try using just the one training session.  I must admit that I wasn't expecting too much on the accuracy front, but the result has been quite surprising to me as it's been a lot more accurate than I thought it would be.

The first thing I did was to tune the microphone using the included IntelliSonic software application.  This program was included by Fujitsu to take best advantage of the single integrated microphone on the P1610.  I set the array to be a narrow focus area directly in front of the microphone to better enable the speech recognition to work.  This entire post was generated using the speech recognition and it only took about five minutes to create in total.  I had to do a fair bit of correction but only very simple corrections as a few of the more specialized words were not recognized correctly.  This was not surprising to me because words like P1610 are not normal words in the English language. To give you an idea of the accuracy the following paragraph will be posted unedited, just like it was recognized by the computer. 

In so far I'm really enjoying using the Fujitsu P1610 Tablet PC.  This small slate form is working out very well for me on a daily basis, and I find it provides the maximum utility with the minimal amount of BULK and WEIGHT to carry on a daily basis.  the words appearing in all caps are words that I had to spell for the recognizer to get correct. It is really nice that you can spell words in the middle of sentences to have them peer correctly.

I am looking forward to trying Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 using this integrated microphone. I believe it will do a very good job with much less training.  Next up I am going to try the system command control features and I'll report what I find using those in a future post.    

Comments

[lsbeller]

This is the review I have been waiting for! Thank you! I use the current P1510D with speech recognition regularly but had to buy another microphone to get the accuracy I wanted. The P1510D motherboard is also not compatible with the Sonic array microphone I have. I think you also have that external array microphone. I world like to see if it is compatible and more effective on the P1610.

Steve

[scott]

Stupid Question, but where do I find the IntelliSonic software application on the p1610, I cant find it?

[jk]

Steve, the external array mic I have will only work with certain SoundMax audio cards, not the SigmaTel the 1610 has.

Scott, it's in the control panel.

[Tax Man]

JK,
I wish I understood what the whole dual array microphone thing was all about. Nice review. So you dictated the post using voice recognition? I noticed that the last line of the post has a different word than you intended. I think you probably meant "appear" instead of "peer." Only 1 typo. Did you have to make a bunch of corrections to your dictation or did the software get it right?

[John in Norway]

You're really starting to annoy me JK! Not only do you buy the gadgets that I lust after but you also try out the software I want! Everytime I load up your blog my credit card runs and hides!

Seriously though, I'll be very interested in how Dragon works. I was hoping to put it on my Q1 and try out the microphones but it won't install because the processor isn't powerful enough.

[scott]

Thanks. Without you guys I would never know half the things I can do with this great gadget.

[jk]

Tax Man, as it states in the post that paragraph was posted as it was recognized, thus the "peer" instead of appear. I did edit the rest of the article although that was not very involved.

[GTDOC]

JK,
Is this now YOUR Fuji, or are you still using a demo?
I'm happily using Dragon Medical 8 on my desktop and am glad to know that it could also be used on a P1610.
Oh, 1GB RAM or 512K on your notebook?