Plain Talk is:

Speech Recognition

and

Text-to-speech

Apple Computer Inc. delivers free of charge Speech Technology( Apple Plain Talk ) to your Mac OS computer.

Speech Recognition System Requirements :

• A Power Macintosh with 16-bit sound
• System 7.5 or later
• A microphone, such as Apple's PlainTalk Microphone or the built-in microphone on some Apple AudioVision monitors.

If your computer doesn't meet theese requirements, you can still use Text-To-Speech.

I tried it, and it was great.

Here's an introduction by The MacAuthority about Plain Talk.

If you don't have an external microphone, Speech Recognition won't work very well. And check out what kind of microphone that fits your Mac OS computer. My Performa 5400 can only use Apple's special standard that gives better stereo.

Now I can say e.g :

" Computer: scroll to bottom"

and I don't have to find my mouse to read the bottom of a window

"Computer: Shut down the computer"

Guess what happens !

"Computer: Tell me a joke" (Replies!!!: "Knock, knock!)

"Computer: Who's there" (Replies: Amos!)

"Computer: Amos who?" (Replies: Amosquito bit me!)

This is just the fun stuff. There is lots of useful commands available.

Check out Commercial Software using Plain Talk,

What about some Additional Voices if you already have Plain Talk.

All of this is available from Apples Speech pages.

All feedback to : s845@ii.uib.no