Required Microsoft Agent Components for Talking
Caller ID
REQUIRED COMPONENTS FOR TALKING CALLER
ID
(you need the core components, English speech engine and at least one character)
Microsoft has moved many of the links below. Please visit http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/downloads/user.asp to download the components mentioned below if they do not work.
To see if your computer already has Microsoft Agent, click this link http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/TryMSAgent.htm. If it doesn't, this page will load many if not all the components you need for the Microsoft Agent.
![]()
Download
Core Components (0.4 MB)
(Windows ME/2000 already have this pre-installed)
Download
English Speech Engine (1.0 MB)
(This is pre-installed on some OEM version of Windows ME. If
the character won't talk, download this file and run it.)
Genie [(c) 1996-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
(Windows ME/2000 already have a character installed.)
For a nice chart showing exactly what you need based on your operating system, click here.
ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS FOR MICROSOFT AGENT
To install additional animated character for use with Talking Caller ID 32, you can download them here. These will download the same characters as found on the Microsoft Agent download page using the link mentioned above. After you download a file, run it to install that character. Then in Talking Caller ID, you can right click on the character and select Select Character.
To download the following characters, go to http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/downloads/user.asp
Peedy [(c) 1996-1998
Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.] is a parrot and is cool!
Merlin [(c) 1996-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.]is a wizard and
is very good.
Robby [(c) 1996-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.] is a robot who
is hard to understand.
To select different voices and/or languages, you will also need install the runtime binaries and Speech Control Panel below:
RUNTIME BINARIES
Install the Microsoft SAPI 4.0a runtime binaries (824 KB exe)
SPEECH CONTROL PANEL
I also recommend that you download speech control panel so you can train your voice and also change the pronunciation of words in the dictionary for text-to-speech output. Download it by clicking on the link below and then run the downloaded file to install it. You will then access this by going to the windows control panel and click in the icon.
Download
the Speech Control Panel (927 KB exe)
GET A LOT OF NEAT NEW VOICES USING THE ORIGINAL MICROSOFT SPEECH ENGINE
You can get a lot more voices for your Talking Caller ID by installing the original
Microsoft™ Speech Engine. These voices (male and female) sound very natural but they are not as accurate in pronunciation as the MSAgent
text to speech engine. To take advantage of the additional voices you must do
the following:
1. Download and install Version 5 of Talking Caller ID.
2. Download and Install the Microsoft™ Speech Engine. You can download it from
here.
When you are finished, run Talking Caller ID, go to Tools > Settings >
Audio tab. There is a drop down box called "Select Language and
Voice". This is where you can select from the various voices.
SPEECH RECOGNITION ENGINE
To enable the speech recognition feature of the program, you will need to download the speech recognition engine. You can click on the following link to download it. Then run the downloaded file to install it.
Download the
Microsoft® Speech Recognition Engine (.exe file, 6 MB).
FOREIGN LANGUAGES NOW SUPPORTED
Now you can also install several different languages from the Microsoft Agent Home Page.
After clicking this link, go to the download page and follow the instructions
for downloading additional languages. You need both the Microsoft Agent
language support file for your language, the Text-to-speech engine for your
language and the runtime binaries shown above.
Here are some more links where you can get more characters and/or information about
Microsoft Agent.
Here is another character named Claude from http://www.cantoche.com/