All you have to do is ask

Research by Mori last week revealed that more than half of us end up shouting at our computers in frustration when they don't work. It seems that if only we had talked to them instead, everything would have been OK.

Voice-control is the next great goal of the techie world, and while it has been overhyped for years, it is getting everywhere, from your palmtop to sophisticated robo-phone operators.

The all-new Windows XP now has voice-control built in. Switch on the microphone and speak the words on the toolbar clearly. You will see the actions performed on screen just as if you had pointed and clicked using the mouse, but it's slow to install and quite limited. More impressive is the Dragon Naturally Speaking 6 Professional, developed by speech pioneers Lernout and Hauspie, which went bust in 2001 and has been resurrected by Scansoft. After a week of training, we had it about 90 per cent accurate, opening windows, typing and sending e-mails, but it is still prone to glitches. Scansoft has also just brought out PDsay, the first voice programme for Pocket PC (see www.scansoft/pdsay. com).

Most of us will first meet the new tech on the phone. In the early days, you had to get words exactly right for anything to work, and be particular about how you talked. They are now powerful enough to recognise many synonyms, which makes them easier to talk to, according to Nick Applegarth, of voice recognition company Nuance.

The Speech Recognition Company (SRC, www.src.co.uk) has developed a demonstration phone-betting system: callers can make bets on upcoming Formula One Grand Prix races. Say virtually what you like, and as long as you come up with a recognisable amount, driver and race, it will take the bet. It recognised: "I'll have £50 on Coulthard at Hockenheim" and, most impressively, transcribed "A monkey on Mika at Monte". "It can cope with a variety of accents and background noise," says Chris Hart, managing director at SRC. "A small percentage of voices are hard to recognise. We call them 'goats' in the trade."

Goats aside, betting is not the only thing you can do simply by asking.

Organise your life

Dial 08701 101010 to get Eckoh to organ-ise your life without touching a keypad. You can create a phone book and diary, get the weather, news headlines, traffic updates and horoscope. You can shop, place bets and take an instant trivia quiz. Mobile-phone users may find even briefly losing the line will cause havoc (it failed to recognise three of my perfectly correct answers). There is a demo on eckoh.com .

Shop till you drop the phone

Virgin Mobile's 4321 voice portal has a voice-activated shopping channel. Say "I'll have one of those, please" and you get a 15 per cent discount off (so far) CDs, DVDs and console games courtesy of a cheeky French maid called Chantelle or Ronald, a diamond geezer. Eckoh runs the service for Virgin. Go to virginmobile.com/mobile/xtras for a demo.

Ring your probation officer

London criminals who must report to the police daily as a condition of their probation can phone a computer that recognises their voices. The computer knows which number is being used and it gives them random numbers to repeat so that they can't record a tape. The system is currently on trial.

Send in the bailiffs

American debt collection agency Plaza Associates rings people who have defaulted on loans, using a speech synthesis system to tell them how much they owe and the likely consequences of non-payment. The debtor can respond by agreeing to a payment plan. Plaza reckons the system has a higher success rate than human callers because getting a call from a computer is less embarrassing or threatening. See plazaassociates.com .

Play with your money

In the US, more than 60 per cent of calls taken by stockbrokers Charles Schwab ( schwab.com ) are dealt with by speech recognition systems. It recognises stocks by the number, company name or a nickname. Pension firm T Rowe Price tells you how your fund is doing (www. troweprice.com).

If your overdraft is with Lloyds TSB, Phonebank Express will tell you what you owe. Ring 0800 056 0090 for a demo.