Speak 1.8.84

• License:

  Free to try; $19.99 to buy

• Editor's Rating:

  4.0 stars

• Average User Rating:

  3.5 stars (out of 5 votes) Rate it!

• Downloads:

  381,366

• Operating Systems:

  Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98

• Additional Requirements:

  Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP

• Limitations:

  Cannot change characters

• Date Added:

  July 11, 2003

• Previous Versions:

  Select a version Speak 1.8.83 Speak 1.8.80 Speak 1.8.51 Speak 1.8.45 Speak 1.8.27 Speak 1.8.7 Speak 1.6.64 Speak 1.6.34

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Publisher's description of Speak

From ShadiSoft.com:

Speak will use Microsoft Agent animated characters to read your text for you. You can tell Merlin (as a character example) to read your documents, e-mails, Web pages, or any text in the clipboard. Just keep the cool animated character on top of your desktop and click on him whenever you want him to read for you. Control the speed and pitch and enjoy many characters with different expressions and animations. In addition, Speak features voice-recognition technology, enabling your computer to accept spoken commands. Voice recognition can be used to launch applications and Web sites, play music, shut down or restart your computer, or just reply. Speak also will remind you of appointments, and the character will try to entertain you by telling jokes, singing, or just yawning and sleeping. You can play WAV files and change voices or languages with the download of extra speech engines.

See more CNET content tagged:

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Editor's review of Speak

• 4.0 stars

• "Speak"

• Reviewed by: CNET Staff
• Version reviewed: Speak 1.8.84

This program uses the built-in Microsoft speech engine and animated characters to read documents out loud to you. The Microsoft voices are perfectly intelligible, but not particularly pleasant, especially the female ones. We tested only the reading capabilities of Speak, which are fun but not revolutionary. The interface could be improved by adding hot keys to stop reading or control speeds. To read e-mails, you can set the program to skip some symbols, such as quotations. Besides its basic speech functions, Speak can remind you about important events and tell the occasional funny joke. The program doesn't consume much memory, which makes it well-suited as a diversion for home users, especially kids.

User reviews

• Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
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• 4 stars

  1 out of 1 people found this review helpful

  Version: Speak 1.8.84

  "good voice recognition engine"

  by tkuzz on March 7, 2006

  Pros: -had diferent voice tone for (!,?)unlike read please

  -auto read clipboard for free

  Cons: -female voice sounds like chipmunk voice or dwarf voice

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• 1 stars

  Version: Speak 1.8.84

  "Program is not running at all after installation."

  on August 27, 2003

  Summary: After installing the program, it's saying, 'character merlin not found' and then it's saying no other characters are found and not running at all. time waste for downloading.

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