Does anyone have any recommendations for text to speech programs?

[fortcollins]

Does anyone have any recommendations for text to speech programs?

There seem to be a lot of them with no apparent winners. The speech quality of most leaves me unimpressed

I am currently using Monologue '97. I got a copy for $5 at the computer show. It doesn't display the reading position in text you can't quickly adjust the playback speed. After hearing some more recent programs, however, I would rate the speech quality of this 13-year old program as "excellent."

The program and developer, First Byte, seems to have disappeared without a trace.

I found a good program speech qualitywise "sayz me" http://www.datafurnace.net.au/sayzme/ that too disappeared, not complete at version 0.51.

Is there some reason why good quality speech to text programs seem to disappear?