It’s a perfect app for someone like me, who always forgets people’s names.įace-recognition programs are not without their shortcomings. The BioMouse stores “data points” that make a match with your finger.

Slightly larger than an ordinary desktop mouse, it plugs into a parallel port and uses software that works with Windows 95 or 98, Windows NT, and several flavors of Unix. One of the most usable of these so-called “biometric” security devices is the BioMouse Desktop Fingerprint Scanner ($299). The good news is, I don’t have to remember all that data anymore, now that a new method of personal identification is at hand.įingerprint-identification systems – once limited to the realm of “Mission: Impossible” – have come to the PC. And that makes me vulnerable to hackers and plain old-fashioned thieves. Like most people, I use obvious PINs, or else I come up with hard-to-crack passwords and write them down. You might be able to do it, but I sure can’t. Quick: recite all your passwords, pins, and security codes. The results can seem magical – but think about your needs before buying either of these programs.Ĭoordinates: NaturallySpeaking Preferred, Dragon Systems Inc., 80, ViaVoice Gold, IBM Corp., 80, Read My Finger Both programs run on Windows, and both enable you to dictate your ruminations instead of typing them into your PC. IBM chimed in with a similar product, ViaVoice, soon afterward.

Speech-recognition software has been a hot market since Dragon Systems released its NaturallySpeaking software last summer. I’ll show you what’s “natural,” and what’s not, about these newfangled programs and devices.

But some of it is good enough to accomplish specific tasks – enabling people, for example, to write reports by speaking to their PC instead of pounding away on their keyboard.

Is all of this great stuff ready for prime time? Not quite. So-called “natural computing” programs – such as software that lets you speak to your PC or that identifies you to your computer – promise to increase computer security, to reduce carpal-tunnel syndrome, to boost productivity, and to make working with PCs a lot less frustrating.

Run viavoice 98 on windows 7