Rumors about upcoming Kurzweil 3000 Upgrade?

I am told by very reliable sources that the Kurzweil 3000 upgrade should be out about mid-January. There are some sales out there now (with upgrades included for the 1st 90 days). It will apparently have new voices, have word prediction capabilities, will have multiple vocabularies (specialized like for science or SocStudies, rather then one big dictionary), it adds homonyns, and it can convert files to MP3 (to be heard on almost any MP3 player)

I took advantage of one of the sales and I’m excited to have it up and running so my son can spend the Winter Break learning the program.
KathleenW

Kurzweil will upgrade they system come this March 2004. But it will not be a new OCR engine.

Let me tell you of an exciting software firm called Premier Software at the following web site:
www.readingmadeeasy.com

They are working on a program that has the total functionality of Kurzweil 3000 or WYNN but only costs $150 for parents to buy!!! This software should be available within the next month. Their current software Scan and Read Pro will scan and read but without the graphics being saved. In the next month they will have our version which they call see what you scan which will save the graphics.

Text-to-audio will turn text to reading aloud which you can automatically burn to a CD ($29)!!!

This is an exceptional opportunity for both parents and schools to acquire adaptive assistive software at a reasonable price!!

Jim — Michigan
I do not sell this software. I am simply dedicated to the best! I plan to demonstrate this software to as many parents and schools as I can. Becuase it is good and it is inexpensive. The company is totally dedicated to helping the education field over trying to make a bunch of money.

I posted information about Premier Software
www.readingmadeeasy.com

Their upgrade will be available this summer ready for schools for the fall. I have worked with them on some suggestions for their upgrade. If there are things that Kurzweil 3000 doesn’t do for you, let me know and I’ll cash or suggestions on it Premier Software people.

Jim — Michigan

Hi—I just wanted to join in here–I have the Kurzweil in my room (LD Resource), and I’m always looking for new and inventive ideas. While some of my kids use the Kurzi, they tend to think the voices are robotic. I’m interested in this update–could the voices possibly more human sounding?

Thanks,
Kelti

Hello Kelti:

You can get more natural sounding voices for the Kurzweil. These voices are more natural becuase they are actual people’s voices. These voices are not distributed by Kurzweil but are available from several other vendors. These voices are called AT&T Natural Voices. Two places you can purchase these voices are as follows:

TextAloud MP3 www.nextup.com ($50) for a text reader and AT&T voices. This product also allows you to make MP3 files for playback CDs or in MP3 player.

Universal Reader www.readingmadeeasy.com also provides a text reader with AT&T voices ($29). As a school district you can request a grant from the distributer premier software and get this software for free. They also distribute other adaptive software to school districts as well.

Once you install the AT&T voices you can select them under the options -> reading tab in your Kurzweil.

If you need additional help installing these voices and running the Kurzweil right feel free to contact me.

[email protected]

Jim — Michigan