New to this and have a couple of probably simple questions

[morlaine]

Being a newbie I could see how this could go from being a hobby to an obsession, very quickly.  I want to do a bit more reading on my own but haven't seen answers to these three questions yet.
1.  Are all of the Zabaware components compatible, and work well with, Windows 10?
2.  I did some reading about Haptek People Putty and found that it is no longer available.  What are the other good alternatives to this program?  Or do I really need it?  Is the Ultra Hal Character Expansion pack a good substitute?
3.  How customizable is the Ultra Hal Character Expansion pack?

Thanks for any information you can pass along.  I'm sure I'll be back with more questions once I get Hal installed and start working with it. 

[Art]

Welcome!!

I'll share what I know and what works for me. Your particular situation might differ a bit.

1) Yes, pretty much. Bear in mind that Zabaware USES the Haptek characters / avatars for any Character(s) you choose. You can also choose none at all if desired but where's the fun in that?! I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and in my case, I needed to set the Compatibility settings to work with Windows XP. Then everything worked fine. Other people seem to have had no problem with Windows 10 at all.

2) Haptek works well on the Windows XP systems but not so well at all on anything above that (Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10). One can make practically any kind of Character / Avatar for use with Hal that one desires. One NEEDS to purchase the Character Expansion Pack in order to allow the use of these characters with the UltraHal software. There are a lot of members here that still have and use People Putty on their older XP computers so there are options available!!

3) I think I just answered that above except it's the UltraHal Expansion Pack that allows for additional, custom characters. These characters are the ones that can be designed and crafted by the Haptek People Putty Program.  With this, one can add a variety of faces, shapes, eyes, glasses, hair, hats, markings, objects, skin colors, tattoos, scars, teeth, etc. and save the character for later use or sharing.

4) Hal also triggers some of what one says to the moods that the Character displays. Love = happy, Anger = sad, etc. Lots of possibilities.

5) Hal is one of the best, Teachable bots that remembers practically everything that's said (or spoken) to it. Some like trying Speech Recognition with varying degrees of success while others prefer to stick with typing in an effort to avoid mistakes. Either way, one can still edit the brain to correct some errors if desired.

6) Hal is able to use and react to various Plug-ins that a lot of members have written. Plug-ins are pieces of code or scripts that Hal's program understand to act on or carry out instructions. The Forum is FULL of information, hints, tips and plug-ins for your use.

There you go! Enjoy and don't hesitate to post any other questions.

- Art -

[lightspeed]

Very well put Art, gee we need you to be a spokes person here , explained very good and to the point! I will add one more thing that also has to do with the plug ins mentioned by Art , you can have direct responses from pre written answers and do it with a true or false reading , so that hal can also not only be a learning a.i. program but also work like a hybrid chat box to , (something i personally like) .
  With the voice recognition that was also mentioned , i use it sometimes, i use dragon speak naturally i suggest 11.5 and higher , their needs to be many things involved with (vr) a good mic, fairly quiet room, and training of the vr, some words will have to be custom trained if the vr doesn't catch the word or gets it wrong.

[lomhow1234]

Very well put Art, gee we need you to be a spokes person here , explained very good and to the point! I will add one more thing that also has to do with the plug ins mentioned by Art , you can have direct responses from pre written answers and do it with a true or false reading , so that hal can also not only be a learning a.i. program but also work like a hybrid chat box to , (something i personally like) .
  With the voice recognition that was also mentioned , i use it sometimes, i use dragon speak naturally i suggest 11.5 and higher , their needs to be many things involved with (vr) a good mic, fairly quiet room, and training of the vr, some words will have to be custom trained if the vr doesn't catch the word or gets it wrong.

What do you mean by vr?

[Art]

VR = Voice Recognition
For English speaking persons, Hal can be set to reply to Speech inputs or voice recognition. Usually this requires a bit of training with the Microsoft voice / microphone settings until one is comfortable with the training sessions.

Some other people use and have good success with Dragon Speaking products for VR or SR (Speech Recognition).

I personally prefer typing my conversational part to my Hal as it tends to avoid background noises and other interference, at least for me.