Power User
From: Mac Tip List (Forwarded by Mark Novak)

One area where Macs have fallen behind PCs is speech recognition. However,
given the right equipment (and a nearly unlimited budget) Mac users can
control their computers with speech just as well as PC users. Here's a little
story to illustrate how this can happen: 

Scholle Sawyer, one of Macworld's editors, suffers from RSI (Repetitive
Stress Injury) and can use a computer keyboard and mouse in only a limited
way. Although Scholle dearly loves her Mac, she found that its speech
recognition capabilities weren't advanced enough for her to get her work
done. She therefore opted to get a PC and Dragon's Naturally Speaking Pro
dictation program -- an application that reliably (and quickly) transcribes
words you speak into a headset. 

Naturally Speaking and the PC worked fine together, but Scholle wanted to use
her Mac as well and here's what she did: With a copy of Netopia's Timbuktu
Pro installed on both machines and networked with Miramar Systems' PC MacLAN,
she's found that she can control her Mac -- and dictate to it quite easily --
via Naturally Speaking. Naturally Speaking translates her words into Windows
key commands, Timbuktu translates those Windows key commands into Mac key
commands, and PC MacLAN allows the two machines to talk to one another. 

So here's the tip: If you need to control your Mac via voice, all you need is
a PC, Naturally Speaking, two copies of Timbuktu Pro, and PC MacLAN. Hardly a
bargain, granted, but it can be done. 

Web links:

Dragon Systems      http://www.dragonsys.com/
Netopia             http://www.netopia.com/
Miramar Systems     http://www.miramarsys.com/index.htm

=====

Gee, I'll keep this solution in mind next time someone asks! Another route is
to utilize the TAP box sold by Synapse that will link a PC running speech
recognition to a Mac or SUN computer or a PC on UNIX, etc. It's the same
ultimate concept of sending keyboard strings to the second computer. They
sell this as a package and not the box by itself. I'm not up on their
pricing.

    Synapse
    415/455-9700
    http://www.synapseadaptive.com 

Ray Grott

