I have been doing lots of HTA stuff recently......here's an ultra small text to speech wrapper for Microsoft SAM (Windows only). SAM isn't installed on Win 98 or 2000 by default (I think), but is in XP.
Save this as speech.HTA and double click it like an EXE. Then just type something in the text area and press the speak button.
You definitely have my vote with Microsoft Sam being scary! Vista doesn't get Microsoft Sam though, we get Microsoft Anna...
Wikipedia used to have a "101 Things to do with Microsoft Sam", but I can't find it anymore.
I did the reverse today though. I got my computer to convert my speech to text! It's quite accurate actually.