Kim,
The voices aren't as good as the sample I heard of the Kate voice for HAL -- but, if you want a program that works, I think you'll find that ReadPlease will do it,
www.readplease.com. Their title is "ReadPlease Plus 2003" so you can see they haven't changed anything in three years. Try their free download first. But, i've been able to use it on a couple of my puters and my wife has used it as a teacher of special ed, so it has a good record in my experience. It has a very straightforward interface where you can choose voices, set speed, correct pronunciation. The only thing it lacks is the slick, new, lifelike voices. I'm about to delete everything else from my machine and stick with ReadPlease until this business grows up a bit.
As for Bill -- I take it this is your baby; you should know that telling us about people who have no problems is not support. Telling us to figure it out ourselves is not support. And, hiding out for weeks while we ask for help before making an appearance in a forum is not support. I think Kim is more pissed than I am; if I sound incensed, it's because a simple, dispassionate statement of the facts in this case really does condemn your retail policies.
So, you see us as "wanting to put the fault on Zabaware when in fact the fault is with our systems." That's a pretty muddled view of things. Zabaware does not work on my system. Clearly it's the combination that is at fault. If I buy software from Adobe that doesn't run on my system, they understand that we need to work out the problem between the two. Sometimes it's a new driver or patch from Adobe, sometimes it's a tweak to my system, but they don't just wish me luck and predict that I'll be really happy if I ever get it running!
Like Kim, I have deteriorating vision right at the center of my visual field. I still get along fine in a general way, though fine discriminations are difficult. I can still read my screen easily if I enlarge the font. But, I want to gradually accustom myself to using technology to shift into an audio mode wherever possible. I tell you this to give you a sense of where I and many other (potential) customers are coming from: we are not geeks interested in AI; we are regular folks who want tech help. We want the technology to help us with our regular challenges; we don't want the technology to *be* the challenge. We're not stupid, and we're not hostile; we just have other things to do and we're disappointed that the helpful software your website appeared to offer didn't pan out.
I honestly believe that at least the two of us should get our money back, because the software simply doesn't fulfill the implied contract. But, I'm not going to lose sleep over the matter. It would be nice though if, when I visit the website again in a year, there is a "Contact" page in the menu and, on that page, some warranty info.