Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 5/22/85; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) Newsgroups: net.consumers Subject: Re: DAK Industries (and speakers...) Message-ID: <1591@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Sat, 9-Nov-85 17:03:03 EST Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1591 Posted: Sat Nov 9 17:03:03 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 09:33:38 EST References: <176@micropro.UUCP> <2869@pesnta.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh Lines: 65 Hmm, I seem to have gotten their latest catalog too. I have no idea how I got on their mailing list. But the ads are pretty entertaining, all about the hard luck of some company who has wonderful products but has to dump them on a liquidator like DAK at a big discount. On page 51 of their catalog is a voice recognition phone from Audec. It's your basic clock-phone, with a few bells and whistles: a speakerphone, an alarm, and the key: a voice recognition feature, so that you speak the name instead of dialing the number. Having seen an ad for the Audec phone in a Byte card, I ordered one several months ago. The phone is a really fragrant piece of junk. (I should have known better than to get a phone that isn't made by AT&T, but now I see why.) There is a loose connection somewhere in the handset, resulting in so much crackling noise on the line as to make the phone unusable except in speakerphone mode. Once it managed to hang up the line when I picked it up by accident while a call was in progress on another extension (a good trick since the remote party originated the call.) The handset is the most uncomfortable design I can imagine, and there's a mute button on the handset located so that if you hold the handset between your shoulder and chin, it mutes you. The touchpad is UNDERNEATH the handset, so you can't dial without picking up the handset (meaning you can't dial it in speakerphone mode.) It's as though a human factors person had deliberately designed the worst possible user interface. But the whole point of the phone is voice recognition, right? Well, it's the usual "train it with your voice" hack. It knows 16 numbers, and there is a corresponding array of 16 LED's and 16 buttons. You speak a name for each number, and you also have a confirming word such as OK or YES or DIAL (think of it as.) You pick up the handset (can't use speakerphone), press a special button, and say the name of where you want to call. The corresponding LED lights up, you say OK, and it dials. One serious flaw is that only one person can use the voice features, since it only recognizes OK in one voice. Different people might use different buttons, but that confirmation kills it for family use (in spite of their billing as a family phone.) But here's the rub: rather than pick up the phone and speak into it, all you have to do is push one of the 16 buttons! I'd much rather just hit a button than go through a 5 step process with voice. Now, for an interesting quote from the DAK page: WHY SO CHEAP Audec is an R&D company working on voice recognition systems. One day, they may be responsible for introducing the first voice recognition typewriter. [I shudder to think about this product.] Well, the only way to really test their chip was to get it out to consumers and let the public, not the lab technicians, test it. Well, they've succeeded. Hmm. It's nice to be a guinea pig for somebody while paying full price. I also wonder what sort of consumer testing they were doing, since I never got any followup from them. No surveys, no offers of a refund or an upgraded product, zilch. It wasn't my money being spent, so it's not worth my time to pursue getting a refund, but I urge people out there to not consider the $89 price in the DAK catalog a bargain. About the only good thing I can say about this thing is it makes a nice alarm clock.