The Dragon Naturally Speaking series from Nuance has rightly held the flame for commercially available voice-recognition software, and the company continues to develop and update the brand.

A number of different versions are available, from the most basic Standard package up to the 9 Preferred Wireless Edition on test here.

Notably, this version incorporates Vista compatibility and, in addition to general wireless support, youíll find a Plantronics CS60 USB wireless headset in the box.

You can either fit one of four over-ear supports, which hold the earpiece and mouthpieces in the correct position on your face, or for extended use you might prefer the full headband grip, as the former can get a bit sore after an hour or so of use.

Provided you install everything in the right order, setup is pretty straightforward, with Naturally Speaking picking up the USB dock supplied with the earpiece when you first run the software. Performance here was very good, with the added bonus of being able to stand quite a distance away from your computer (up to 10m typically) and still issue voice commands.

Although you can get started straight away without going through any voice training, Nuance advises you to at least run through the basics to personalise the software. In addition, you can have Naturally Speaking scan your My Documents folder along with sent items in your email to get a better idea of the sorts of specific words and phrases you use.

The performance of this aspect of the software is fairly good, but even though we took some time running through training routines and re-teaching specific words, we didnít find it to be the stated 99 per cent.

The package includes Realspeak Text to Speech, which will read back any highlighted text to you in a lilting female voice that sounds rather like a heavily distorted Moira Stuart. The Preferred Edition will also communicate with the various components of Microsoft Office (including the new 2007 version).

There's decent support for handheld devices, including dictation for Pocket PCs and Palm Tungstens, and the ability to transcribe directly from compatible portable recorders. You can also use a dedicated transcribe folder to automatically convert any audio files you drop into it, selecting a specific user profile during the process so any language settings or alterations youíve made are taken into account.

As well as general text processing, Naturally Speaking is adept at recognising spoken words as commands. You can open files and applications, browse the internet and control your Windows environment reasonably well without going anywhere near your PC. It takes some time to learn the keywords required to navigate effectively, but once you do itís quite an enjoyable experience being able to sit back and surf the web without typing or using the mouse.

Despite a range of impressive improvements, including some very tidy wireless support that adds more convenience to proceedings, the software isn't flawless. It is, perhaps, a little unfair to expect it to be, but factors such as rereading and correcting mistakes that are an inherent drawback to the speech recognition process mean that those expecting time-saving results are likely to be let down.

Having said that, it's still the best dictation package around and has what it takes to stay on top of the admittedly sparse competition.