Product Reviews

If the highlight of your working week is listening to your MP3 player on the journey to and from work, make sure that your boss doesn't get to read this. Otherwise, your brief spells of musical pleasure might be replaced by listening to e-mails from the accounts department, courtesy of MagneticTime's MT1.

In short, MT1 is a program that converts text into audio, via speech synthesis. This isn't anything particularly innovative or new, but there are a few extra features that go some way to justifying its £30 price tag. The first of these is that unlike other simple text-to-speech converters, MT1 actually converts text to an MP3 file rather than just read it aloud in real-time. The file can then be transferred to either an iPod, PDA or compatible mobile phone for later listening.

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Getting started with MT1 is easy enough - just import a document into its library and it will be automatically converted to an MP3 file. The process would be a tad easier if you could drag-and-drop files onto the MT1 window to convert them, but instead you have to click the 'import' button and browse for each one. The program would also have you believe that it only supports Microsoft Word documents, but it works just as well with plain text and RTF files too.

MT1 can also convert e-mails to MP3. It runs in the background, monitoring your Outlook or Outlook Express inbox and when any messages arrive that match any rules you've set up (which work like normal e-mail filters), they're automatically converted. Converted documents and e-mails can be dropped into a folder of your choice, ready for synchronisation to a portable device and if you use an iPod, a playlist is automatically created in iTunes.

If your experience of speech synthesis is limited to a Speak 'n' Spell or Kenneth Kendall's robotic tones on the BBC Micro, then it's safe to say that you'll be impressed by MagneticTime's MT1. Its female voice is still obviously synthesised, but its mild American accent sounds impressively smooth. Its cadence is less than perfect though, and its glottal delivery sounds like gargling at times, but the speech is loud and clear for 95 per cent of the time.