MailSpeaker

The underpowered but essentially functional MailSpeaker combines two basic utilities: one for reading text files aloud and another for reading e-mails. MailSpeaker monitors your e-mail accounts even when you don't have an e-mail client open. When it detects a new message, it gives you a verbal alert and reads the e-mail out loud. The program can save e-mails in audio format, but only as WAV files. You'll need a third-party conversion utility if you want to compress them. The interface is dull and not very convenient. For instance, MailSpeaker can't automatically read the Clipboard contents as soon as you have pasted new text. To our disappointment, the program doesn't let you change the pitch and speed of the speaking voice. And you may run into trouble if you use a Webmail service such as Hotmail or Yahoo. In that case, you'll need to install the same publisher's All2POP software as well (and even then, it only supports Hotmail and Yahoo). In all, given the abundance of free text-to-speech tools available, we think MailSpeaker offers too little for its $25 price.