(FORTUNE Magazine) – So I say to the parrot sitting in the corner of my screen, "Tell me a joke."

The parrot flaps his wings and says, "What's the difference between an onion and a bagpipe?"

"I don't know," I say. "What's the difference?"

The parrot says, "Nobody cries when you chop up a bagpipe." And then he starts laughing. As if this joke is really funny.

No, I'm not hallucinating, even though it's late and I'm sitting here alone in my office, staring at my computer. There really is a parrot in the corner of my screen. His name is Prody, and he flies around, cracks jokes, plays games, sings songs, and occasionally even does something useful--although not as often as he should.

Prody Parrot (Version 2.0) is the star of a fascinating if flawed program from Mindmaker of San Jose that gives you a look at the future of computing--the day you and your PC will communicate by voice and the PC will actually do what you want it to do with nothing more on your part than a few spoken words.

Mindmaker's specialty is the intelligent personal assistant--the kind of program that not only checks your stock portfolio on demand but also stays on the job in the background to alert you when the market makes a sudden move or your favorite stock takes an unexpected dive. While Prody is flapping around your screen, begging for food and making a nuisance of himself, he's also waiting for you to say something important--a command that will check your e-mail, display a stock ticker, run your word processor or spreadsheet, make an Internet phone call, or browse the Web using voice commands.

The $100 Windows 95/98 package includes a headset microphone that plugs into your sound card, and fully functional versions of TextAssist and VoiceAssist, programs licensed from Lernout & Hauspie that convert text into speech and recognize your voice intelligently enough to put you in command of many common programs without the use of your mouse. Although Prody uses the Lernout programs to make you think he's the one doing the talking and listening, both programs can work in the background if you decide to tell Prody to get lost--a good thing, because it's easy to get tired of the little creep.

When VoiceAssist is listening, you can run a program by saying something like "Check my mail" or "Start Excel" and navigate through most software menus by speaking commands like "File" or "Open" or "Save." VoiceAssist is "speaker independent," which means you don't have to train it to recognize your individual voice. On the downside, its vocabulary is limited, so you will have to teach it commands and actions that aren't in its built-in dictionary.

If you don't like the idea of talking to your PC (or the strange looks you get from others when you do), you can train the assistant to recognize other types of commands. For example, using your mouse, you can draw an imaginary "X" on your desktop to start Excel.

All this is incredibly cool when it works. For example, Prody does a good job of letting you browse the Web by speaking the name of links out loud. But unfortunately it doesn't work often enough. As often as not, Prody doesn't understand one of your commands or gets it wrong. One of the problems is the microphone; although it's attached to a headset, the gadget doesn't have an earphone, so you have to use your speakers to hear Prody. If you turn up your microphone volume loud enough for Prody to understand you, feedback from the speakers can confuse him. So you may want to invest in a better set that includes a headphone.

Prody also puts quite a strain on systems that aren't state of the art, including my 18-month-old 300MHz Pentium II. When he was working, I noticed a considerable slowdown in almost every program I ran.

But the big question is whether you really want to talk to your computer. It's certainly an alternative for people who have repetitive-stress injuries and need to keep mouse and keyboard use to a minimum. And bantering with Prody was fun at first. But after a while you may realize that it might be just as easy--and often less frustrating--to do things the old way.

For more information, call 408-467-9200 or surf to www.mindmaker.com.