Microsoft has pumped out voice recognition software for years, but the company has a curious aversion to publicizing the fact. With Windows 7, Microsoft's speech recognition has become a decent productivity tool and one that the company should be proud to proclaim as an OS feature. For the casual speech recognition user, nothing beats free—especially when one considers the $100+ price points for third-party software.

But is it powerful enough for serious users? One long-running criticism of Microsoft's bundled Windows software is that is strives only to be "good enough" without ever achieving excellence. Ars Technica's Editor-in-chief Ken Fisher and I put Win 7's built in recognition engine to the test for a couple of months to find out how well it serves the needs of the hardcore word jockey. We'll spare you the suspense: serious users will want to look elsewhere, but this is a great way to show any colleague with a Win 7 machine that speech recognition is real, it's here, and it works.

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Microsoft rolled out a speech recognition engine in Office XP; after installing the suite, users who opted for the speech recognition engine could dictate into Word and other apps.

It wasn't until Windows Vista, though, that speech recognition was baked right into the operating system, and was done so in a competent way. Back in 2007, the New York Times' David Pogue wrote, "I don’t find it quite as accurate as my beloved Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, which is freakishly, 'Star Trek'-ishly accurate. But it’s awfully cool... Speech Recognition is an unsung bright spot in Windows Vista."

With Win 7, Microsoft's speech recognition has come into its own. Starting the program is simple—the "Speech Recognition" control panel applet allows you to set your microphone and toggle the recognition engine on. It couldn't be simpler, and there's nothing to install. In moments, you'll be dictating... right into a tutorial.

An attractive but severe-looking young woman will guide you through the initial tutorial, which introduces all the basic commands and provides plenty of practice in using basic tools like the corrections features. As tutorials go, this one is excellent, and there's a big reveal partway through—the tutorial isn't just teaching you, it's adapting to your voice as you work through each section.

The built-in tutorial

When complete, it's time to control Windows using only the sheer power of your voice. Navigation and OS control are the best features of the built-in recognition engine, and they worked almost flawlessly. "Start Word" worked. Bam. Window open. "Switch to Explorer." Bam. I'm in Explorer. "Double-click Odd Donkey Facts." Bam. "Odd Donkey Facts" folder opens.

You can say just about any scrap of text visible on the screen, from menus to filenames to dialog box options, and the software correctly clicks, selects, or opens. Opening, switching, and controlling programs was simple, easy enough to figure out without even glancing through the printable speech recognition cheat sheet. And when you don't know what to say or there's nothing in particular to say—like when trying to click some icon in Word's ribbon interface—there's still no need to resort to the mouse.

Instead, a simple "Show Numbers" command will overlay the current window with a host of blue rectangles, each placed above a clickable object and each containing a number. Once the rectangles are displayed, say the number and the computer clicks for you.

Excellent integration with Microsoft programs

You can even navigate things like Explorer this way, saying the names of folders and telling the system to "doubleclick World_Domination_Plan."

Even better, the floating voice recognition widget that runs by default when speech recognition is active will even tell you how to do the same thing using an actual voice command. For instance, use the "Show Numbers" command to click the Back arrow in Internet Explorer and Windows helpfully informs you that saying "Back" achieves the same effect. It's a terrific system, and one that's been present in rival programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking for a few versions now—but it's perfected here.

There are limits to navigation and control, and you'll see them most in third-party apps like Chrome. In the screenshot below, you can see the difference between Chrome and IE when the "Show Numbers" command is used—the control widgets are still detected, but the actual page text is not. Unlike IE, Chrome webpages can't be browsed by voice.