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One of the nicest free screen readers. Uses Microsoft's Text-to-Speech engine. Actually, you may find a lot of text readers on the Net (even some free ones), since it is - or so it seems - quite easy to implement such software because all the bits and pieces are already provided by Microsoft as an (optional) part of their Windows OS. Not all such software is worth downloading, though. Of course, it all depends on what you need a text reader for. Maybe you don't and you are only looking for one of those on-screen characters/companions (they are called Microsoft Agents) to speak to you? Get a real person for that - it's definitely more fun, although much harder to switch off and a downright pain to uninstall :(
Software Review - Pros
Great for proofreading text (which is why I needed a text reader in the first place). A handy read-from-clipboard function. A finely adjustable set of four voices.
Software Review - Cons
A somewhat non-standard user interface. To a certain degree, moreover, ReadPlease2000 could be considered crippleware in that it can only handle files up to 16 kB in size. But then again, who has the patience to listen to an overly lengthy text in one go anyway?
User Report - Tips, Tricks and Tweaks
General
The feature you'll probably use most is the read-from-clipboard function. So it's convenient to make a shortcut to the ReadPlease.exe executable, adding the -clip command-line option. Then you assign an accelerator key combo to the shortcut (say, ctrl-alt-R) and you can listen to any text in three keystrokes only: ctrl-a to select the text in a window of any Windows-compliant application, ctrl-c to copy it to the clipboard, and ctrl-alt-R to start reading. Unfortunately, if the text was too large to begin with, only a first portion of it will fit into ReadPlease2000's memory.
