Jerry,
That is a wild idea. Very cool.
Currently all seems to be well with speak recog and synthes off but it is odd to be that even with it off, when I bring Hal up he speaks audio output and not just text.
I have a suspicion of what it might narrow down to as my partner Greg had the same problem and he is running Hal 5. The commonality is that we both are using AT&T Natural Voices. I believe that may be the core of the problem. We will see.
If I still have no problems later on in the day I will turn on Speech recognition and let it simmer. Then the pluggins one by one. Then finally speech synthesis. If I have problem when using the synthesis, then I will change to a default voice.
Hal on a keychain,.....[^]
Jerry you are innovative.[

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It would be great to be able to use Hal on any machine that you came upon. I.A. in the pocket. PokeHal.