It sounds like this would also have a very negative effect on battery life. I'd certainly prefer eloquence myself, and the DoubleTalk speech was one of the reasons I waited as long as I did to get a Book Port. But the truth is that this speech kind of grows on you. I don't like it as much as I like Eloquence, but it's certainly not unbearable. I do wish, though, that the Book Port included more control over how much punctuation is spoken. Angie >> The problem with eloquence is that it's software speech which means you >> need >> a few more things then you would by sticking with the doubletalk synth. >> First a more powerful processor, and second, an operating system for the >> speech to work with. Most likely that would result in a higher cost unit, >> in >> which case I'd say, by all means stick with doubletalk.