Hello everybody I am curious to know whether anybody on list who is willing to donate an unbiassed response to my questions has yet had the opportunity to test with the new Premium voices which Newance Communications Inc. and Freedom Scientific Inc. have recently released for use with their screen-reading applications?
Until now, I have not had the time to download and install these voices. However, my attention was caught by the latest edition of what is usually a very unimpressive piece of audio jounalism, in my opinion. I confess That I don't often avail myself of these productions for precisely that reason. However, on this occasion I managed to listen to the first 10 minutes or so, before becoming bored by the blatent commercialism, and I did take note of the voices announcement. So, I downloaded them a few minutes ago. I noted during my listen that, as always, every single piece of feedback that Mr. Mosen chose to highlight was both American and also those who did nothing other than rave about the product. I have tried, on three occasions now to provide them with constructive feedback which, in all fairness, did include some constructively intended mild criticisms. On none of these occasions were my efforts even acknowledged, far less used in the podcasts. This could, of course, be nothing other than coincidence. I could buy that hypothesis. But I'm a little more skeptical than that. I've never heard anything other that the glowing "wow! Wow! Wow!" type of feedback used. I know of three other people outside of the US who have done as I have done, and their experience has mirrored my own. But that's really by the by, I guess. The most important thing here is the product and I would not deny for a moment that it excels in many respects. Version 18 introduces many new features and numerous bug fixes, all of which must indeed orb well for the JAWS user. Anyway, I'm getting away from my point. Has anybody else tried these new voices, with the exception of the compact voices? When my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 decides once again to cooperate and allows me to log into Windows again, I shall try the newly installed voices to see how they sound. It's fortunate, I guess, that my tablet is equipped with a quad core Intel processor, 5th generation running at 3.7 GHZ, and has 4GB of RAM, clocked at 1800 MHZ. I would anticipate that kind of relatively high-end machine would be required to handle the voices. I wouldn't dare try them at the moment on my six-year-old Samsung laptop, as I think it would finally bring that machine to its knees. But I'm hoping that the voices are better than the previous incarnations which were prone to make a mess of quite a few commonly used British words and expressions. No, I cannot wait! I was about to turn in for the night. But my insaciable curiosity has got the better of me again. Looks like I'm condemned to spending another couple of hours persuading Windows to start, and Jaws to use my newly installed voices! I shall report my constructive findings to the group in due course. ============================== My Compliments And Kindest Regards Gordon Smith 'Accessibility And Information Technology Support Specialist ------------------------------
