November 1998

Philips Speech Processing
64 Perimeter Center East
Atlanta, GA 31146
Ph: 770-821-3909;
Fx: 770-399-9965
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.speechmike.philips.com

Price: Street prices range from $150 to $300. (Sold through SRT Distribution, 612-944-1708.)

SpeechMike Pro is a hybrid handheld input device that combines a trackball, a microphone, a speaker, and programmable function buttons. Thanks to its programmability, the SpeechMike Pro offers some interesting possibilities for people who use CTI and Internet telephony applications. (Imagine programming buttons to accomplish message forwarding, replying, deleting, etc. in a unified messaging application.)

SpeechMike Pro comes bundled with Philips' Control application and MikeRec recorder software. It is also possible to use the SpeechMike Pro with Philips' FreeSpeech 98 command and dictation software.

INSTALLATION
Installing SpeechMike Pro was fairly easy. The handheld unit's tail wire ends in a standard 9-pin serial connector; standard PC microphone and speaker wires split off here. The unit comes with Windows 95 and NT 4.0 drivers, but the 95 driver works just as well under the Windows 98 environment, provided you're aware of a little trick.

An ordinary wizard installs the mouse driver and application software at the same time. After the installation, our test PC's regular mouse remained enabled. Actually, when we tried to uninstall the regular mouse and use the SpeechMike exclusively, neither one worked. So, we left both mice installed. We later discovered that leaving a regular mouse installed side-by-side with the SpeechMike Pro could be beneficial. After all, tasks like highlighting text blocks can be awkward with a trackball. (It's also a cheap thrill to watch the struggle between the SpeechMike Pro's trackball and the regular mouse when you move them in the opposite directions.)

As we mentioned, though, the Windows 98 driver installation was not flawless. (A newer version of the install wizard and drivers should be available by the time you read this review.) In our case, we found that a telephone call to Philips technical support helped. The representatives there faxed us a Windows 98 document that explained a workaround, which was basically a clever series of clicks in obscure directories, followed by a reboot.

DOCUMENTATION
The user's manual, a half-English/half-German booklet, was disappointing. It looked great, and it included a lot of copy describing what the SpeechMike Pro could do. However, the manual presented very little useful information. It gave few details on how the user could actually get the SpeechMike Pro to work. For example, the manual gave us little guidance when it came to programming the unit's buttons. So, rather than rely on the manual, we resorted to calling technical support.

The documentation for the SpeechMike unit was supplemented by a couple of online help files, one for the Control application, and one for the MikeRec application. Neither file was very helpful. (We should note, however, that we did glean one useful piece of information from the Control application's online help. Check out the Operational Testing section for details.)

FEATURES
The SpeechMike Pro package includes several elements: The handheld unit, the aptly named Control application, and MikeRec, a simple recording application. We'll look at each of these in turn.

Handheld Unit

• Ten buttons, seven of which are programmable. (Almost every Windows application can have its own scheme file, that is, .SCM file, and every button can be used by itself or with a CTRL or SHIFT prefix, creating a total of 21 programmable functions per Windows application.)
• A trackball. (The trackball functions as a normal mouse, and may be configured via its own tab to the control panel/mouse screen.)
• Three LEDs for visual feedback.
• A SoundBlaster-compatible microphone and speaker.
• A sturdy housing. (The unit survived several bashings - oops, we mean small drops.)
• Ergonomic design. (Both right-handed and left-handed TMC Labs engineers approved of the unit's overall design and feel. However, one of us noted that the unit started to feel heavy after a few.)
• A plastic hanger that fits nicely on the side of a monitor or CPU. (Our unit, however, lacked a strip of double-faced tape.)

Control Application

• A simple, one-screen GUI.
• A hotkey/text toggle. (In hotkey mode, the assigned SpeechMike Pro button will activate whatever keyboard macro the user specifies. In the keyboard mode, the assigned button will "type" whatever the it has been programmed to type. This is ideal for .SIG files.)
• An auto-assign feature. (When activated, auto-assign will map any button/function combination to a specific application. Otherwise, the macro will work with any Windows application. An example of this would be CTRL-B, which opens the bookmarks file in Netscape Navigator, but formats a bold typeface in Microsoft Word.)
• A hide button. (When hidden, the application is represented by an icon, which appears on the lower right side of the Windows tray.)

MikeRec Application

• A very simple one-screen GUI.
• The use of .WAV files for saved recordings. (Incidentally, MikeRec, unlike the Windows sound recorder, doesn't limit users to a 60-second recording.)
• Support for voice-activated recording, which avoids recording silence, which conserves disk space.
• An acoustic feedback feature that plays the recording during rewinds and fast-forwards. (This feature can help you find a particular spot in a recording.)

OPERATIONAL TESTING
Of the product's three main elements, the handheld unit, the Control application, and the MikeRec application, we'll discuss only the first two. We suppose most readers would find MikeRec less than challenging, especially if they had any experience with the Windows recording application.

Handheld Unit
Like a regular mouse, the SpeechMike Pro is meant as a one-handed device. The user can hold it like a television remote control, or let it rest on the desktop. If the user chooses the desktop method, the unit acts as a sort of trackball alternative to a mouse.

Switching over from a mouse to the SpeechMike Pro takes a little getting used to. For example, although one of the bottom trigger buttons on the handheld unit corresponds to the left mouse button, the second bottom trigger doesn't correspond to the right mouse button. Also, mouse users can take it for granted that one motion, a swipe of the mouse across the mouse pad, will move the cursor from one end of the screen to the other. The trackball, however, has a shorter physical movement versus on-screen movement ratio, so it takes more movements to get from one side of the screen to the other.

To compensate, we adjusted the motion controls in the control panel to a higher speed than we normally would use, and we installed an extra-large, high-contrast black mouse cursor. This makes the trackball much more usable for selecting specific portions of text and for desktop publishing work.

We noticed that the rollers inside the trackball got dirty very fast (so fast, in fact, that after using the SpeechMike Pro for a mere four days, we found that the cursor would often get halfway to where we directed it, and then stop dead in its tracks). Also, we noticed that the microphone's foam cover fell out constantly, and that the unit's two front rubber feet disappeared after one day of steady use.

Control Application
The Control application didn't seem to work with macros programmed into Windows itself. For example, we have a master chart of products to review, in the format of an Excel worksheet saved on the editorial department network drive. Our test PC has shortcuts to three such files on the desktop; these shortcuts are assigned Windows macros like CTRL-ALT-C, CTRL-ALT-T, and CTRL-ALT I to correspond with the product review charts for our three magazines. We attempted to link three buttons on the handheld unit to these macros, but they didn't work.

At first, we thought that the macro buttons worked only within an actual application, and not on the Windows desktop. But then we found that a simpler example (linking the keyboard's Delete key to a SpeechMike Pro button) worked fine in the general desktop environment. We're still not sure what the problem was. Is it that the SpeechMike Pro doesn't work with Windows shortcuts? Is there is a conflict between the Windows keyboard macros and the SpeechMike Pro macros? Anyone who can shed light on this issue is welcome to contact us!

When we experimented with the "hide" feature, we ran into a little trouble. The hide feature is supposed to minimize the GUI into an icon on the Windows taskbar. We configured the Control application's executable file as a shortcut in the StartUp menu, and we configured the application to run minimized, but our preferences didn't take: the program ran on start-up, but it appeared in only one size. Having to minimize the Control application manually was annoying, and without the application running in the background, the button macros wouldn't work.

We decided to check out the Control application's help file. And, despite our skepticism, the help file actually had just the information we needed. Buried deep in the documentation was a sentence noting that the /H parameter would run the application minimized! We added this parameter to the end of the "target" line within the properties dialogue box of the "shortcut to control application" icon and rebooted. Then, the hide feature finally worked.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We'd like to see a few basic improvements in SpeechMike's design. Specifically, we'd like to see :

• Bigger, better rollers inside the trackball. (We suppose better rollers wouldn't have to be cleaned so often.)
• A wireless handheld unit. (An infrared unit would eliminate the need for the annoying wire.)
• Better audio quality from the handheld unit's speaker.
• A revamped control application. (We'd like more customization options.)
• Voice-enabled features. (We would like the option of linking the button macros to simple phrases.)

CONCLUSION
Will users embrace the SpeechMike Pro and devices like it? To answer that question, it might help to consider SpeechMike Pro's price, and whether the SpeechMike Pro represents a step forward in convenience, or whether it simply presents a roughly comparable balance of advantages and drawbacks to what users currently employ.

As for price, we have mixed feelings. The lowest price we've seen is $150, which would be enough to cover the cost of a high-quality mouse and a pair of speakers. (No advantage here.) On the other hand, the SpeechMike Pro does free up a lot of desk space. (A mouse pad and a pair of speakers do add clutter, perhaps more than many users would tolerate - given a choice, of course.)

We think SpeechMike Pro would be used to the greatest advantage in combination with CTI or Internet telephony applications. For example, using the SpeechMike Pro it is far more natural than using a headset. Also, the microphone seems to work better than the inexpensive standalone units we've seen. And, perhaps most important, the programmable buttons open a world of opportunity if you decide to link them to screen pops or to unified messaging applications. You could, for example, program buttons for message forwarding, replying, deleting, etc.

Perhaps the SpeechMike Pro will start appearing on the desks of call center agents, who could use the device to advantage, since many of them are already working with CTI applications and such things as screen pops. We suppose, however, that some of the improvements we suggest may need to be implemented first. (For example, we'd hate to see a call center agent stalled by a dirty, and hence balky, trackball.)

For the moment, the SpeechMike Pro is more of a novelty than a necessity. But it merits attention, and we expect many users will want to experiment with it. You might pick one up as a gift, especially since the holidays are so near. If the SpeechMike Pro seems too pricey, you might consider its less expensive cousin, the SpeechMike standard. This simpler model is available for a mere $69.95.