Many people reckon that personal computers make quite enough of a nuisance of themselves without their having the ability to make an infernal racket as well, but Speech International Ltd of Oxford has come up with a cut-price play-only sound kit, Wave-Play RS, for MS-DOS personal computers. The GBP30 kit comprises a sound board that […]
Many people reckon that personal computers make quite enough of a nuisance of themselves without their having the ability to make an infernal racket as well, but Speech International Ltd of Oxford has come up with a cut-price play-only sound kit, Wave-Play RS, for MS-DOS personal computers. The GBP30 kit comprises a sound board that plugs into the computer’s parallel socket; MS-DOS software including a text-to-speech converter that reads ASCII files out loud, a library of 26 sounds, and graphical interface; headphones; and Windows software including a driver, talking clock and ‘Whoop!’ software that assigns certain noises to certain applications. It uses around 1.8Mb of disk space to install and runs under Windows 3.1. The board is claimed to be ready to go as soon as it is plugged in, and connects in turn to headphones or loudspeakers. The current version speaks with an American accent when reading text or telling users the time. German and French language models are now under development. It can be used to play back – but not send – voice mail messages and, the company says, is a novel way to ‘personalise’ computers. It can also prompt users when their disk is full, give them alarm calls or greet them when they swith their machines on! The kit is available in the UK and in Holland, where it has sold 5,000 copies, many to laptop and notebook users. It will be available in Italy and Germany next year. An MS-DOS only version will be available shortly year for GBP20.
