It's been his voice for a very long time, too -- far longer than 2006. I'm sure that he could have upgraded the sound of the voice over the years (to his own or to simply less-robotic) numerous times, if he'd wanted to.
When I saw him speak, this would have been in '98 or so, he was still using a DOS machine for the speech synthesizer (and given the audience, there were some questions about the hardware), and he'd already been known with that voice for years if not over a decade.
Hawking operates with the same basic assumptions that Roger Ebert does: If something goes wrong with his voice, he has no voice. Thing is, Ebert's a lot more willing to play with it because he can write, or just gesture.
Hawking is understandably entirely reluctant to change *anything* about his system.
Still, at this point (if not back then), I'm not sure a laptop running MS-DOS would be the most reliable option. Presumably the software is developed by a particular company, and I would imagine they have newer versions and will recommend hardware/OS for you. If the company's gone out of business at some point, though.. Oy.
Any consumer PC hardware is going to be more reliable if you buy a new one every year, and then use it actively when it's between 1 and 2 years old -- I do know that he had 2 laptops on the chair simultaneously at that time, although I do not remember if they were both set up to produce voice when necessary or if they were just for different tasks.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-03 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-07 10:10 pm (UTC)When I saw him speak, this would have been in '98 or so, he was still using a DOS machine for the speech synthesizer (and given the audience, there were some questions about the hardware), and he'd already been known with that voice for years if not over a decade.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-07 10:28 pm (UTC)Hawking is understandably entirely reluctant to change *anything* about his system.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-08 10:46 am (UTC)Any consumer PC hardware is going to be more reliable if you buy a new one every year, and then use it actively when it's between 1 and 2 years old -- I do know that he had 2 laptops on the chair simultaneously at that time, although I do not remember if they were both set up to produce voice when necessary or if they were just for different tasks.