downloaded and installed smoothly, but has the most basic of functions, couldnt copy and paste to read from files so was completely useless to me. windows 7

I installed this software to my laptop but i can't hear any voice ...plz if someone know help me to solve this prob.and also text to speech voice preview is not working in my laptop, have windows vista as operating system .do i install any driver to my laptop????????

I bought this software in 2008 or 2009 - can't remember. I also bought a couple of voices. The software does it's job ok. At first I would paste a section of text into NR and for some reason it would copy twice. This would be annoying if you made an mp3 and all the sudden found yourself listening to the same thing over again. The other thing that bugged me was the Pronunciation Editor never seemed to work. When I bought NR these problems were bothered me but since they "Promised" free upgrades it was ok since I thought they would eventually fix them. Well, beware. They don't mean "Free" by the word "Free". Buy this product and then ask for your "Free" upgrade. They will ask you for $10 to maintain THEIR server.
This product works "OK" but why put up with it's bugs and then have you pay to fix them? I recommend buying the voices and using something like: http://clipspeak.codeplex.com/ Clipspeak is Free in the Free sense of the word. Or buy ivona.

Natural voice text to speech reader is a good software. Although what I use and am very satisfied with is a firefox add-on Text to Voice. Very light and yet very powerful. It's completely free of course.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/91405/?src=external-sftx

This software is completely useless if you want it to read anything with accented characters (e.g. fran�aise, mus�e), even if you have purchased the AT&T Natural Voices for the corresponding language (I have Alain and Juliette). It simply treats the those characters as spaces and breaks up the words. The AT&T Natural Voice demo on the AT&T site worked perfectly so it is not about the voices.

What a joke! And to think I've posted links to this "FREE" software around the net. I'm so embarrassed by this piece of useless free junk. TOo MANY LIMITATIONS on DEMO!

This is the simple version of a text to speech software. IT JUST READS TXT and Rft files. Do not get it if you are looking for a PDF reader or a better voice synthetizer than Microsoft SAM

I expected something better than unusable standard microsoft voice (!) and big button "BUY MORE VOICES". This is really not what I would call "free"

over all a nice program, Shame that to be able to record, you need to buy the full program, a good demo, but not what its say's on the box.

Not free software just a demo

I took time downloading this 9mb file to find that it is using the same voice which is available on Adobe Acrobat reader 8. Complete waste of time. If you want a better voice then you need to BUY....

The free version has only the default voice included in it. This makes the whole thing practically worthless. Then they tell you to register an buy more voices!

I always wanted to know new and more information. But it was very boring to read. Whenever I sit down to read it made me very sleepy. This software has provided a way to over come that ..:) ..I am vary pleased to have it on my PC.

A BADLY NEEDED RESOURCE,AND FREE, MAX POINTS FOR THIS ALONE. MAKES MICROSOFT SAM SOUND ALMOST TERMINAL. IF I COULD AFFORD THE FULL VERSION I WOULD CERTAINLY BUY IT.

This is a nice software. Especially that it allows free usage.

John, not sure if you still reading this review thread, but there is a text to speech program that would do exactly what you want. It's TextAloud from NextUp.com. For only $30 it's woth it. You can even purchase the most natural voices in the industry today made by AT&T. I think that's an extra $35 or so.

To do the voice change, you go under the Edit menu and select Insert Voice Change. In script, it would look like this:

hello bob, how are you today ?
I'm fine, you look well

Hope this helps.

This is like the rest of the free text to speech, its good but STILL does not do what I need. I had a program years ago that allowed you to write screen plays AND insert bracketed commands for the speech engine to CHANGE VOICES!!!. I have been searching for *&^%$# years to try and find this lost program but no luck. With it I could write a complete play and have different voices read the parts. Where is it and what was it ???? As an example of the text to change voices, you would write like this .....
[*mary*] hello bob, how are you today ?
[*bob*] I'm fine, you look well

etc etc I have hunted and hunted and hunted the world net but STILL can't find this simple engine