Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Microsoft Sam

In the last couple weeks I have discovered something on my computer. It is Microsoft Sam. Maybe I have not been paying attention or maybe I just noticed it was the year 2005, but this Sam character is new to me.

For those of you that may not know what it is, let me explain. Under the control panel on your computer there is a speech option. You click on that and it will take you to Microsoft Sam. There you can type in any message and it will vocalize what you type in. It can be a lot of fun around the office.

Microsoft Sam has said many funny things in our office. If you are not using Sam, you need to be. If anyone else out there knows of any other things like this that can be used, please let me know. It helps take the stress away at the office.

Late.

3 comments:

Cindy-Lou said...

Too funny! I just checked it out and I have "Michelle", "Michael", AND Microsoft Sam! I showed some people in our office how to change the "Office Assistant" in Microsoft to a cat or dog, etc. the other day and they've been amused for a week now! If you have the dog or cat you can right click and choose "animate!" and it will do "tricks", per se. Lol!
Nice blog!

Tim Bastron said...

Cindy-lou I need to know more about what you are talking about here. It sounds like I could be having more fun. How do I get that stuff.

Pablo Honey said...

If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0, you can choose to have the PC dictate the PDF to you (in the voice that you choose from the Speech Control Panel). I think the option in Acrobat is called “Read Out Loud”. It's a bit dicey if there's a lot of mixed content, but if the PDF file is an e-book (or has lot’s of linear text), it works pretty well.

The animated Office Assistant is available only if you have Microsoft Office installed on your PC (preferably version 2000 or higher). However, once you’ve seen all of the animations for any one character, you will tire of the Office Assistant’s “helpful” interruptions during your work day. It’s cute, but that’s about it... and you’ve got to really enjoy cuteness in order to tolerate having to constantly move the Office Assistant out of the way while you are working.