Just had a quick read about Handcent and see that it can both recognize speech and speak SMS.
You said you had the "recognizer not present" error when trying "text to speech". Surely a "recognizer" is only used for "speech to text". You recognize speech but text is just text.
You said you had the "recognizer not present" error when trying "text to speech". Surely a "recognizer" is only used for "speech to text". You recognize speech but text is just text.