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experience I had yesterday. Went to CompUSA to buy new ink cartridges
for my HP600 and they had a big sign out saying that "reps from IBM and
Dragon would be here today to demonstrate voice recognition software."
Great, I thought, I've used VR for years, have seen my VARs demo of the
products, but now I'll get to watch reps from the big companies - this
should be good. First I watched the IBM rep. He had brought his own
laptop to demo. I don't think he had ever demoed before and am pretty
sure he had never even sold Girl Scout Cookies. The screen on the
laptop was all but impossible to see but he kept pointing at it and took
his headset off every time he did. From the expression on his face, it
was obvious that the headset was hurting him. In total, he probably
said 10 words to the system during the whole 20 minute demo but he did
spend a lot of time mumbling about "vocabulary matrix, macros,
statistical anomalies, etc." (for the most part I had no idea what he
was talking about, even when I did understand the words) The "Dragon
rep" turned out to be not from Dragon at all but someone who identified
himself as a "long time user" of Nat. He opened a brand new box of Nat
Preferred (he said the only difference between it and Personal was the
size of the vocabulary, which, he said, most people didn't need) and
proceeded to try to install it on a brand new Compaq. It wouldn't
install. He punched around on the system for a long time (the
3-fingered salute wouldn't even shut the darn thing down). I asked him
how much RAM was on the Compaq he was trying to install on - he said
"that doesn't matter" - it will work on any "modern PC". (turned out
the Compaq only had 16 MB RAM on it). After hanging around for about 45
minutes watching the guy try to install Nat and listening to the IBM guy
across the aisle drone on about "matrix, etc." even I got bored and
left.
The really sad part to me is that Nat (okay I'll admit it) and VV are
viable and useful products when installed correctly on the right system
and proper training of both the user and the software takes place. It
is possible that IBM and Dragon will move a lot of boxes with their
blister pack mentality for the next few quarters or so BUT THEN WHAT?
If the consumer has purchased either of these products through mass
merchandisers they will get no support from the merchant, IBM's VV
phone support has always been a joke, Dragon's is rapidly becoming
so.................so what happens to sales then? Gee, maybe the
money-grubbing, over-charging VARs who actually install and train people
on this software (and charge for doing so) have a use after all?
:)
Rose
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