Another voice demonstration used 802.11 to let Merlin communicate with the desktop, which processes the voice input and uses the recognition engine in Office XP for processing and converting voice into text. A Dictation powertool was shown that utilizes a PC with Office XP's speech recognition as the server, to process spoken word from Merlin and convert it to text. We got a good laugh when the presenter said "this is a demonstration of Microsoft's speech recognition" and it was converted to "This administration of Microsoft's been tracking mission."

One thing I really did not like about Merlin is the configuration of 802.11 on the device. You must enter all types of information to get it working properly, whereas all I had to do on my Mac was click on the Airport icon and select the network I was connecting to -- that was it. Microsoft has always been hooked on wizards (hence the Merlin name), and it seriously needs a wizard for wireless ethernet configuration.