Well, I’ve seen some recent commercials for speech recognition software that can do wonders.  Speech recognition is built into Windows 8 and add-on software has been around for years and can provide some advantages if you produce a lot of documents.  You can also use it for opening and closing applications but it’s always slower than your trusty mouse (or now finger).

The most important thing to remember is to go through the the training exercises to help the system correctly recognize your voice.