I use MASH,(microsoft agent scripting helper) and had it for over a year, and Cyber Buddy not too long ago. (I don't leave those running) I had to have Microsoft Text to Speech Engine for MASH to work (So they could talk) Then I installed Cyber Buddy, and it installed it's own L&H Tru-Voice Engine. It worked fine.
I added the British Voice Engine after that. I learned about Ultral-Hal at DesktopMates.com. I decided to give it a shot. The free version seemed to work fine, but got tired of the nag. ("Did you click the upgrade button yet?", etc)
I bought the full version, and installed it after removing the free version from add/remove.
I like the fact I could talk back to Hal with my spoken voice.
This character, named Electra (from desktop mates) would sometimes show emotion. (smile, surprised, etc) and sometimes, she would not speak after these "emotions".
I only run an anti-virus (AVG) and Windows Firewall. I tried shutting down the rest of the programs, but Hal still lost his/her voice on occasion, no lip movement, no sound, just a text response.
There might be a problem with the character?? Mary works fine.
BTW,I have 640mb of physical RAM, and 24.5 GB space left of Drive C:.
MY computer is a Dell Dimension 4400, P4, 1.6 GHZ processor.