Out-of-the-box stability aside, Microsoft Narrator is a part of W2k's Accessibility tool suite. Quoting its splash screen, this utility "is intended to help people with low vision to setup their own computers, or use other people's computers." Dialog boxes, keystrokes, e-mail messages, and just about any string of on-screen text can be read aloud on-the-fly. When you're in a pickle, the Narrator is perfect -- although it's not something that one would want to use on a continual basis. Speech synthesis is still years away from being an essential part of the daily computing experience. You can say that again.