Hi. In the old days, even if I had a synthesizer built in the kernel, I could check and if speakup had deactivated because the synth was not connected, the name would be changed to none. I would like to be able to do this now because I want to automatically switch to a software synth if my hardware one is not connected. However, the name of the synth remains tthe same making it more difficult to do this. Any ideas on this would be appreciated. -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici covici at ccs.covici.com