So we all know that Microsoft have now announced that “Vista will be released when it is ready”, so don’t hold your breath, you’re likely to go grey before we see it.

But how are the existing features coming along? Well, let’s see…

At Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting on Thursday, Vista product manager Shanen Boettcher set out to show just how easy to use the speech recognition technology built into upcoming Windows Vista software will be. Like, for example, dictating aloud a simple, heartfelt letter to mom, and having one’s voice automatically transcribed into a computer.

The result was a disaster.

Several tries at making the computer understand the simple salutation “Dear Mom” was read by Microsoft software as “Dear Aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all.” Attempts to correct or undo or delete the error only deepened the mess.

Based on this report from Reuters, I think we can agree that there’s still a tad of tweaking to be done…

And until next time, dear readers, remember: “Let’s set so double the killer delete select all.”*

[*: I think we’re onto a winner here. It’s bound to compete with “All your base are belong to us”…]