Hand-held computers can now recognise speech, thanks to a new system called
Speech Powertoys. Voice-recognition software is notoriously memory-hungry and
hand-held computers have limited memory, but researchers at Microsoft have found
a way round the problem. They transferred all the number crunching to a desktop
computer, using the speech engine built into Office XP on the PC. This way you
can talk into your hand-held computer to schedule meetings and write e-mail,
while your desktop computer does all the hard work.
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