Voice Xpress-Plus (hereafter referred to as VX) is designed to allow you to dictate to your computer and have that dictation typed out as a document on your screen.  It allows you to, verbally, format, punctuate, highlight and give other commands that will be obeyed by the computer.

To use VX you need to know your system. VX requires WIN95,( or NT4.0, with Service Pack 3 or later) a Pentium processor of at least 200MHz with MMX, a 16-bit sound card "with good sound quality", 130MB Hard Disk space, 32MB RAM plus 8MB to use VX with Word; (48MB RAM for Win NT 4.0) and a CD ROM drive. VX works only with Word 97 or Word 7. It comes with a headset (Microphone and earpiece) which needs needs to be plugged into your CPU. It has two plugs one for the Mic. and one for the earpiece. If you have speakers you need not plug in the Black plug if you want the sound to emanate from your speakers.

The installation of the VX was relatively easy. However the "Enrollment" was very difficult. Enrollment is the means by which you set up your microphone quality with relationship to background noises and to have the program gain recognition of your voice and your own unique manner of speech patterns. I could not get the quality of the Mic to exceed a position over half-way between poor and average no matter how many times I tried and I spent about an hour trying. I had to call Tech. support (an 800 number) about 7 times with all the problems I encountered. Although they were very courteous and knowledgeable, they were unable to assist me in improving the Mic. quality. It required over an hour of reading phrases into the Mic. and I found that I had to repeat words as many as 5 times for VX to gain recognition. Tech support finally told me that they only reason they could come up with for such difficulty was that there was a "Glitch" on my sound card. (Note: My computer is a new Dell, Pentium II, 400MHz, 96 RAM, 8.5GigHD with a Montego Turtle Beach 16-bit sound card, so there is some doubt that's the problem.) I also noted that when I presented the same problems to different technicians. They responded with different solutions to them, none of which resolved them.

I did finally get VX running but it would not recognize many of the words dictated to it and very few of the commands. Overall, I found the program difficult to use.  However, to be fair, I will return the program to BPCA so that someone else can try to install and "Enrol" it on another computer.

As an attorney, I felt this program would be of great assistance to me in my practice and I looked forward, with great expectation, to using it. However most of the documents, I use, are already on my computer and need very little revision, so I would not reap the benefits it should be able to offer. In conclusion, if you can get the program up and running and you do a lot of correspondence this program can be an asset. This is especially true for people who have physical problems with typing and for those who just do a lot of typing.