A system and method for text to speech conversion. The method of performing text to speech conversion on a portable device includes: identifying a portion of text for conversion to speech format, wherein the identifying includes performing a prediction based on information associated with a user. While the portable device is connected to a power source, a text to speech conversion is performed on the portion of text to produce converted speech. The converted speech is stored into a memory device of the portable device. A reader application is executed, wherein a user request is received for narration of the portion of text. During the executing, the converted speech is accessed from the memory device and rendered to the user, responsive to the user request.