Review of Speereo Voice Operated Organizer Sapie

[Speereo]

What: Speereo Voice Operated Organizer Sapie 3.1
From: Speereo Software UK, www.speereo.com
Reviewed By: www.mobile2day.de
Mobile2Day.de is a European Web site hosting software applications, news, product tests, workshops and other content for Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS and Java platforms. Mobile2Day also manages PDA and Smartphone channels for other sites, achieving more than 150 million visitors per month with PDA and/or Smartphone content on T-Online, Tiscali, Mobilcom, Fujitsu Siemens, Qtek and download shops on other well-known sites.
Original article (in German):
http://www.mobile2day.de/platform_wi...d=742&page=752

Speereo Voice Operated Organizer Sapie 3.1

Sapie from Speereo UK is a virtual secretary for your PDA. She can hear and understand your voice commands. The program can be totally controlled by voice and it offers you a variety of handy functions to access easily and quickly, including managing your agenda and E-mails. It’s great that you can see all its functions from the first look.
The program works well under Windows Mobile 2003, Windows Mobile 5.0 and also under Windows Mobile 6.0. Sapie works with VGA and QVGA screens, but the device must also have Touch Screen. Sapie also supports Square Screen devices. Anyway it is easy to download Demo version and have a look whether Sapie is compatible with your device or not.
In the beginning of the review it is necessary to notice that right now the program supports only English. Unfortunately it doesn’t support German. For someone it is a reason not to purchase the program, but it is a business application and for such category of customers it wouldn’t be much of a problem.
On the first start up Sapie offers you a small introduction perfectly showing abilities of the program. The introduction consists of 6 parts and it is possible to access them anytime you want if you don’t know what to do next. Some parts have several handy windows in order to explain all the abilities of the program.

Videos are designed to give the impression how the program reacts. Looking through all the possible videos doesn’t take much time and with time they started confusing me a bit. However it is easy to turn them off in the Setup menu if you wish. In the Setup menu you can also choose female and male voices but you can’t choose videos. There are many options to control different actions by voice, so voice control won’t be monotonous. Sapie offers you 3-4 different phrases for one action, unlike videos.

After the introduction and quite long and detailed Setup you will be amazed by Sapie’s voice recognition. The technology is great and speech recognition works perfectly. The program recognizes over 80 sentences and control words so that I could manage everything without any problems and easily use my favorite functions.
Here is an example how it is easy and handy to create new appointment by voice:
After choosing “Create new appointment” you have to enter the required time. You see your calendar and you can just say “this friday” or “next sunday” if you want to choose next week or you can say “after next saturday”. For the far future you can say “another day” and choose the required month and day.

So you have chosen the day and the time. The program understands every 15 minutes in a row, but you can just say, for example “10:30 in the morning” or “6:15 in the evening” and Sapie will recognize and understand your voice. Longer phrases such as “four forty-five in the evening” require a little practice though.

At your will you can enter a short note and choose a fixed title for your appointment. You can always cancel your appointment if you want. All of this you can manage just with your voice, without using stylus.

In the same way you can manage your contacts, enter your tasks or send E-mails. If you wish, you can enter contacts for the required dates and voice mails not using stylus at all. Still you’ll have to edit your contacts with the help of keyboard. Speech recognition is very good but not absolutely perfect. This is not actually critical, because this program in such price category is really unique.
The program is so good that I didn’t have any problems at all with English voice commands. Sapie might not understand your voice if you set “priority low” option, but she will perfectly understand you if you set “priority normal” or “priority high” options.
If you are looking for a product which can manage your Appointments, Tasks, Contacts and E-mails by your own voice, then Speereo Voice Operated Organizer Sapie 3.1 is surely a great choice. If you have a spoken English and if you don’t have much spare time you can easily schedule your day with Sapie, without using stylus.
Sapie is surely interesting for those who want to have “gimmick” product on their PDA so that they could show others that their handheld device can manage virtually any task.
You can download free Trial version and buy Speereo Voice Operated Organizer Sapie at www.mobile2day.de or visit Speereo's homepage: www.speereo.com

[nuguy]

Wow, that is pretty damned cool!

[WanderingMinstrel]

Is this the new version? Or the same old bad version?

From the dates in the screenshots, this looks like the old version that DOES NOT WORK. Be careful. Speerio, didn't you promise to notify burned users when the new working program was ready and let us have it for free to make up for past problems?

When I tried the older version:
(1) I had a b**ch of a time downloading it.
(2) I had even a worse time installing it.
(3) It did not work in my 6700.
(4) It could not be uninstalled from my laptop where the .exe file installed a set-up prog.
(5) Six or more months later, pieces of it still keep spontaneously reinstalling themselves on my PPC and need to be cleared off manually or with MemMaid.

I remember the hype and screenshots in the first post in this thread. And, yes, it sounded great! I was very disappointed when it turned out to be crapware. And even more disappointed when it turned out to be impossible to uninstall. Still waiting for the improved version to show up. And I will post when/if I hear anything.

[Speereo]

Hello nuguy & WanderingMinstrel!

I do remember my promise. This is the review of an older version. It does work, but newer devices have issues. It works OK on all PPCs and touchscreen devices with WM 5/0 or older.

Please note that this review wasn't written by us. It wasn'r paid for. It was written by a guy who took some time to get aquainted with the product and liked it.

Thank you for your feedback, WanderingMinstrel. I don't remember you saying anything about download process. What was the problem?

And I would really appreciate a bit more information about (5). Can you please provide some screenshots or send bad registry keys / files?

P.S. Name's SpeerEo

[Speereo]

http://www.pocketpcmag.com/cms/award...nners_ppc_apps




Speereo Voice Organizer (Sapie) is the FINALIST in the eighth annual Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine Best Software Awards!
Sapie is the Finalist in PocketPC Utilities Speech & Voice Commander / Dialer category.

http://www.personal-secretary.com/