PC Mascot delivers the mail.

BEEN thinking about getting another bird, but don't want the extra mess or expense? Well, you can always get a robot.

For instance, Manley's $14.96 battery-powered Tekno Polly the Robotic Parrot, a 9-inch-tall metallic cockatoo, can keep you amused by flapping his wings, repeating phrases and dancing.

PC Mascot, a $59.99 robotic parrot from Mitsumi, also flaps, talks and pumps his tail. But Mascot, a cute little silver guy with a round head and black beak, legs and crest, earns his keep as a working bird. You attach the 8.9-ounce unit to your PC via a USB cable, and Mascot reads your incoming e-mail to you and reminds you of scheduled appointments. He even tells corny jokes.

I tried PC Mascot out for a couple of days. He offers some cool text-to-speech capabilities, and who wouldn't love the way he cocks his little robotic head when he speaks. However, he's a bit too limited to be a serious business tool. He's more like a fun desk ornament or novelty gift for PC-using parrot lovers.

Time for fun!
PC Mascot is fairly easy to set up. It took me only a few minutes to install the software, including IBM's ViaVoice text-to-speech engine, and plug the bird into a USB port (now there's a phrase I never thought I'd use).

When my PC recognized the new hardware, PC Mascot flapped his little metallic wings, flicked his plastic tail, worked his beak and announced in a stiff mechanical voice, "All right. Time for some fun." Indeed.

Like most robotic critters currently on the market, PC Mascot is made by a Japanese company, and, unfortunately, a few things get lost in the translation. The user's manual is written roughly enough to be distracting; the description of setting up an e-mail account to use with PC Mascot is especially difficult to plow through.

Still, if you're used to fiddling with your e-mail account settings, it's not too hard to figure things out. PC Mascot works with up to three POP3 e-mail accounts (sorry, Hotmail and other Web mail users) and handles up to 50 messages, displayed five at a time in a simple pop-up dialog box.

To get PC Mascot to read your mail out loud, you just provide a few pieces of information about your account - incoming server address, account name, and password - and set other desired parameters, such as how often you want PC Mascot to announce your messages (every 5, 15 or 30 minutes). Then you sit back and wait for PC Mascot to flap his wings and repeat incoming messages word for word.

PC Mascot didn't always intercept my messages as he should have (I'm still trying to figure out why), but when he did work correctly, it was a hoot. He states the sender's e-mail address and the subject of the e-mail, and then he reads the body of the message.

You can replay old e-mails by clicking on "OldMails" in the PC Mascot Control utility that gets installed in your system tray. However, you can't reply to an e-mail or read it as standard text using PC Mascot software. You have to return to your standard POP3 e-mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Express, to perform those tasks.

A scheduler, too
PC Mascot also comes with scheduling software. You can set up recurring daily, weekly, monthly or annual appointments. You can even use the bird as a timer and save up to five presets to save yourself some typing. However, there's no calendar view or snooze option - PC Mascot reminds you of the appointment once and that's it.

The memo function also is limited. It lets you record messages to be listened to by others, as you might use your phone answering machine. However, since PC Mascot is a text-to-voice machine, you have to type in your message so the bird can play it back in its own voice (recording your own voice isn't an option).

Moreover, there's no hardware control for deleting an old message. Might as well just jot down hubby's reminder to pick up the dry cleaning on a scrap of paper and be done with it.

What's that you say?
I was able to understand PC Mascot about 90 percent of the time. When I couldn't, part of the problem was the slightly raspy voice. By default, PC Mascot speaks in a male voice at moderate volume, which I found a little difficult to understand, especially when he read unfamiliar e-mail addresses.

Turning volume up all the way, switching to a slightly deeper male voice, and picking a slower speed helped some. (At its highest speed setting, PC Mascot talkslikethis. You can also choose the voice of a child, an adult woman, or, for some odd reason, an elderly woman. However, to me the other voices sounded like a man, too - trying to sound like a child or a woman.)

Another reason I had trouble understanding PC Mascot was that he often speaks as if English were a second language. For instance, instead of saying, "You've got e-mail," he utters, "You've got a new mail." After you figure out what he's trying to say, the language barrier isn't an insurmountable problem.

However, some of PC Mascot's e-mail reading habits are. In addition to the message he sometimes reads header information and signatures, too, including punctuation. For instance, a decorative rule at the bottom of an e-mail becomes, "underscore, underscore, underscore, underscore," and on and on, ad infinitum.

It doesn't take too many messages like that before you're ready to go back to the old-fashioned way of receiving e-mails.

Crazy!
When he's not delivering e-mails or reminding you of doctor's appointments, PC Mascot likes to just hang out and chitchat, telling the occasional joke or offering a random thought for the day. He's preprogrammed with 38 phrases in all.

Robots have never made the best comedians, unless you count unintentional humor. ("Why did the elephant cross the road? Because it was the chicken's day off. Ha ha ha ha! Crazy!")

On the bright side, you can turn off all the canned phrases and type in up to 100 of your own for PC Mascot to proclaim. Here's where PC Mascot might be useful as an effective nagger. I could see using him to tell me, "Move your car for the street sweeper!" every half hour on Thursdays.

Visions of Bubo
You can't love birds and not like PC Mascot. I like the way he flutters his wings and flicks his little black tail. He reminded both Paul and me of Bubo, the robotic owl in Clash of the Titans.

As for PC Mascot's practical benefits, they're arguable, especially when you're looking at spending 60 bucks.

Then again, when was a bird ever practical?