Ping John Larkin

I went through a Hewlett-Packard printer extended warranty registration last night over the phone talking to a stupid machine. It wasn't easy. The speech recognition wasn't the only problem. In order to verify what I said, the process used low-quality text to speech to play it back. The one I use on a PC is easier to understand. I had to concentrate hard and repeat at least two of the alphanumeric terms (understanding an unknown string of characters is much more difficult than picking a word from a set). That process is probably too frustrating for most people, but maybe faster than using an alternative Hewlett-Packard low-budget support process for registering an extended warranty.