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Today you can walk into a computer store and buy professionally recorded digital sounds by the hundreds. Prosonus of North Hollywood sells a $30 disk called Mr. Sound FX stuffed with 150 noises, from "Psycho Strings" (ominous, insistent chords from the Hitchcock film) to "Dead Man Scream," including 75 bits produced by actor Michael Winslow, the one-man sound machine featured in Police Academy movies who can make bombs drop, jets roar and lasers blast using nothing more than a microphone. Sound Source Unlimited of Westlake Village, California, specializes in collections of clips lifted from classic sci-fi movies -- ideal for hearing HAL the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey intone, "I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me . . ." every time you turn off your machine.
In October, giant Microsoft joined the fray, offering three $40 disks in its new SoundBits series. One features sound clips from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, like Fred Flintstone's trademark "Yabba-dabba-doo!" and Yogi's "Smarter than the average bear." Another boasts 50 famous lines from Hollywood classics, including Bogart's "the stuff that dreams are made of" from The Maltese Falcon and the Wicked Witch of the West threatening Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" Baseline Publishing, in Memphis, Tennessee, goes one step further with a $40 program it calls Talking Moose and His Cartoon Carnival. This sneaky bit of software waits until you least expect it and then lets loose a random quip such as "Boy, are you lazy" or "I like lawyers . . . stir-fried!"
Being caught off guard by a wiseacre computer may not be everybody's idea of fun. One New York City office worker had to do some fast explaining when his wife overheard a strange woman saying in her sexiest voice, "Tell me what you want me to do." As a rule, it's a good idea to break in these programs gradually, starting with a few simple sounds and working your way up. Most people get such a kick when they first hear their computer talk that they tend to go overboard -- assigning messages to every keystroke and driving themselves crazy the minute they need to do some real work. But these folks can always rip out the sound effects and go back to where they started -- with a simple, utilitarian beep.