Jim Allchin comments on Vista text to speech

When you look back at what Windows was in 1990 and you look at what Vista is slated to be next year, are you surprised or disappointed at the level of development and sophistication they have achieved?

[JimAll]
I would say both. I didn't know that we were going to make as much progress on the tablet [PC], which is an incredible advance, and the stuff we're doing in Windows Vista will let it read your e-mail. That's phenomenal, and I would consider that to be a surprise.

https://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1885768,00.asp

That's pretty cool that Jim would point us out. Actually, with the right little app, you could currently get your email read to you, however, with Vista you will be getting MS Anna for US English for free - and she's on par with some of the better voices that are commercially available out there. There would actually be a number of ways that "Vista" reads to you your email... I'm wondering as to which way he's referring. The screen reader program built into Vista would allow one to read any window's content via TTS, but a plug-in into Outlook would also do the trick easily enough.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2006
  However, the technology has improved beyond what is built into Windows XP and Windows Vista will include some of it as Microsoft blogger “jaywaltm” points out:
  
  ...
• Anonymous
  March 05, 2006
  I just thought others might be interested in this site I found a few days ago.
  
  It's a TTS plugin for Oulook.  The product is called Loudmail and it written by a company called Ekando.   I downloaded it a few days ago, and so far so good.  It works with Microsoft Mary and Mike and it seems really reliable.
  
  Cheers
  Jenny