Well, I just received my Dectalk USB yesterday. I ordered it last week, since I'd been limping along with software synthesis for several months after purchasing a new computer. So, here is a sort of mini-review of the unit. The synthesizer itself is somewhat smaller and lighter than the old Dectalk Express. It does not contain a rechargable battery, but instead, comes with a removable plain old 9-volt battery. The documentation indicates that you can only get an hour out of the battery, so it's pretty useless. I'd advise saving the battery for the next time your smoke detector needs one and forget using it in the Dectalk USB. It can be powered either through a computer's USB port, or a normal wall wart. The device does not have the word "DecTalk" in Braille on the top as the Express did. It does, however have the thumb wheel which serves both as power and volume control. Like the Express, it clicks off if you turn it all the way to the left. When it is powered on, it says "Dectalk USB ready." In addition to the power/volume thumb wheel, there is a small switch behind the headphone jack. This switch selects either serial or USB mode. When the switch is flipped towards the headphone jack, you are in serial mode. It comes out of the box with the switch set away from the headphone jack, meaning that it defaults to USB mode. Of course, you need serial mode for Linux. Even in serial mode, the supplied USB cable can be plugged into a USB port to supply power if you don't feel like using the wall wart or the useless battery. The back of the synthesizer sports the USB and serial connectors, and the jack for the wall wart. As for the synthesizer itself, it sounds very similar to the Dectalk Express. However, it does use the newer speech engine from Fonix, which has a few little quirks. For one thing, it seems to pronounce a lot of words with short o's as if they had an ou sound. It sounds like it is saying "boudy" instead of "body." It also doesn't handle those demos which make the Dectalk sing. This is a pretty useless feature, but it does suggest that it may handle commands slightly differently from the Dectalk Express. The voices sound slightly different as well. It's not as painful as the Dectalk run time 5.0, fortunately. I still prefer the older software, however. Some of the other problems I've observed could be Speakup-related. For example, I have both the Dectalk Express and software synth compiled directly in my kernel. I've used the appropriate append line in lilo.conf to select the Dectalk at boot. While Speakup finds it, I cannot mute it during boot with a keypad enter until fairly late in the boot process. I have to listen to a lot of boot messages before it will work. The second problem, is that if I start reviewing the screen too quickly, the speech will suddenly slow to a crawl. I have the speakupconf utility, and have to do a "speakupconf load" to restore it. Lastly, it has the same problem as other Dectalk models where words with apostrophes get pronounced as if the apostrophe were a space. This seems to be a Speakup bug. So, I'm wondering if others using Speakup with a Dectalk Express have noticed these problems, or if they are Dectalk USB specific?
