Using Windows 7 when my hands are tied

Lately I’ve found myself wanting to read/watch something on my Windows 7 computer and I have my baby son in one hand and his bottle in the other. Controlling the computer using the keyboard or mouse without using either of my hands was becoming a difficult juggling trick. So a few nights ago I turned on Windows Voice Recognition, trained it for my voice and have started using it to control my computer. Thus far I am impressed with the results. I can easily browse the internet, start programs and dicatate emails. I haven’t tried writing code with voice recognition and I don’t think that I ever will, but perhaps it is good at that. Using my voice is not as fast as navigating with either the keyboard, or the mouse, but it is better than nothing. Dictating emails is interesting because the voice recognition needs to hear half sentances; so my thoughts come together very slowly. So far the only actions which have tripped me up are that the baby’s crying is interpreted as “home”, and when I tell it to close the tab it will close the whole browser. But for the most part it has been a positive experience. I have been impressed with how I can say random links on the screen and so far it as always figured out what I was going for.

So keep it up Windows team. I hope that the voice recognition will improve and become even more usefull in the future.