Anyone using a computer nowadays spends ages formatting letters, creating documents and preparing business reports. Ability Write is word-processing software which offers you a broad range of options for completing your work in a slick professional way. The software gives you the ability to insert a picture onto documents and you can place borders around text to highlight sections. You can put a border around one or more paragraphs but not around an individual sentence within paragraphs. You can also use Ability Write to apply colour. There is help on how to create newsletters and a number of handy templates for creating documents such as CVs. Telephone-based technical support is provided as well. Most of the basic features of Ability Write will be familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft Windows applications. If you want a change from Microsoft, fair enough. But some computer users are going to question whether it is worth installing this software if they already have Microsoft programs. [+]

VoicePad is a basic voice-recognition package designed for dictating text or controlling your computer using voice commands. You can't use VoicePadto dictate directly into other applications, but text can be cut and pasted, or saved in Word 6 format or RTF (Rich Text Format), which are readable by many word processors. Do note that this is truly a basic package: don't expect cutting-edge technology. VoicePad uses single-word recognition, so that users must pause between each word, rather than the more advanced continuous speech recognition. It is now standard practice to claim high accuracy rates straight out of the box-in other words, without first training the software to recognise your voice pattern. In fact, getting computers to recognise a voice is very difficult, and even with the most up-to-date products some training time is required. (This is known as "enrolment" in voice-recognition jargon). VoicePad improves slightly with initial training, but still peforms with some inaccuracies. In 1997 Kurzweil was bought out by Lernout & Hauspie, who went on to develop their voice recognition product Voice Xpress. This and other major products such as IBM's ViaVoice and Dragon's Naturally Speaking all come in several versions-generally more expensive than VoicePad-but after training they may well give considerably better results. [+]