PopAgent Release Notes

Contents
I.     System Requirements
II.    Installing PopAgent
III.   Uninstalling PopAgent
IV.  Current Version Release Notes

I. System Requirements

A.  PopAgent has the following system requirements:
1. Windows® 95, Windows 98, Windows NT® 4.0 (x86), or Windows 2000 Professional
2. Windows NT 4.0 requires administrative privileges to install the Microsoft Agent 2.0 component
3. Sound card installed in the computer
4. Microsoft® Agent 2.0 and Text-to-Speech engine
5. Internet connection with pop3 mail account
6. A Pentium® (or equivalent) 100MHz PC (or faster)
7. At least 16 MB of RAM
8. To use voice commands with the PopAgent characters, you will need a SAPI 4.0 compliant speech recognition installed on your computer.
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II. Installing PopAgent
A.  PopAgent is package in two installation packages - a full install and a base install. The base install contains only the PopAgent program and the animation files for the characters. The full install includes the base install plus Microsoft Agent 2.0 and the Lernout & Hauspie Test-To-Speech Engine. If you already have Agent 2.0 and the Text-To-Speech Engine installed you should use the base install, otherwise use the full install. The base install file is PopAgentxx.exe (where xx is the version, i.e. PopAgent25.exe for PopAgent 2.5) and PopAgentxx_full.exe is the full install file. The full version is also packaged in Zip-format (pagentxx.zip) for those download archives that only allow zip-formatted files.

B.  To install, simply run the installation files PopAgentxx.exe (or PopAgentxx_full.exe). If you happened to download the Zip-formatted version of the installation file (pagentxx.zip), unzip the installation file to a temporary location and run Setup.exe from the temporary location.

C.  For those using Windows 95 without Internet Explorer 4 installed, it is likely that some of your system components are not updated to run PopAgent and Microsoft Agent 2.0. They require the following updates to be installed on you Windows 95 machine (this only applies if you do not have Internet Explorer 4 installed).
 

PopAgent Requirements for Windows 95 without IE4
1. Custom Control Library (comctl32.dll) must be version 4.7 or later

Microsoft Agent 2.0 Requirements for Windows 95 without IE4
1. DCOM 1.2 Update

The safest way to make sure all of the necessary components are update is to install Internet Explorer 4. You may also apply these two patches if needed. More information on obtaining them are on the support FAQ page on the I.M.E. Software web site at http://www.imesoftware.com.

D.  Installing PopAgent on Windows NT 4.0 (x86) requires you to have administrative privileges to install the Microsoft Agent 2.0 component. If you already have Agent 2.0 installed on your machine (and are installing only the PopAgent program), then you do not need any special privileges.

E. Windows 2000 Professional includes its own version of Microsoft Agent. The full install does not install the Microsoft Agent 2.0 component on Windows 2000 Professional platforms.

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III. Uninstalling PopAgent
A. You may uninstall PopAgent by using the Uninstall entry in your PopAgent group on your Start menu. You may also uninstall it from the Windows Control Panel. Double click on the Add/Remove Programs icon. Select PopAgent from the list of programs and hit the Add/Remove button.

B. If you installed the full install, you can remove the Lernout & Hauspie Text-To-Speech Engine from the Control Panel using the Add/Remove Programs applet. It will be listed as Lernout & Hauspie TruVoice American English TTS Engine.

C. Microsoft Agent 2.0 is considered by Microsoft to be an official part of the operating system and will be packaged with future versions of Windows. As such there is no way to uninstall it.

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IV. Current Version Release Notes
A. The current version is 2.5.

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