Speech recognition: A work in progress

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft attempted to show financial analysts on Thursday that speech recognition was finally ready for prime time.

However, the demo of Windows Vista's speech abilities was more representative of the challenges that remain in trying to get software to make sense out of human speech.

Shanen Boettcher, a senior director in Microsoft's Vista unit, got off to a bad start by asking the audience to remain quiet. Not a problem for the already silent crowd, who at most were making some tapping noise on their BlackBerrys.

"I'm going to ask for you to be quiet, which doesn't appear to be too much of a problem," Boettcher said.

Things went from bad to worse as the software got few of his words and commands correct. The closest it came was recognizing "I hope you like the DVD" as "I hope you let the DVD."

The crowd finally did make some noise, breaking into snickers as the demo progressed.

"I'm glad you are enjoying this," Boettcher said.