Download Speak Free for Windows

This program uses the built-in Microsoft speech engine and animated characters to read documents out loud to you. The Microsoft voices are perfectly intelligible, but not particularly pleasant, especially the female ones. We tested only the reading capabilities of Speak, which are fun but not revolutionary. The interface could be improved by adding hot keys to stop reading or control speeds. To read e-mails, you can set the program to skip some symbols, such as quotations. Besides its basic speech functions, Speak can remind you about important events and tell the occasional funny joke. The program doesn’t consume much memory, which makes it well-suited as a diversion for home users, especially kids.