Hey, it is not hard at all. You definitely don't need to pay anyone (you might consider a donation to the kitchen makeers). You just need the kitchen (PPC-BuildOS), the OEM.rar (ingredients or your carrier specific info), and the RUU (the updater). I read a bit before I did it just to make sure I couldn't do anything really bad (but there is always the disclaimer that you could brick your phone). I feel pretty comfortable with the latest WM6 kitchen but I'm holding out on the 6.1 (seems a bit buggy for me from the posts). The main things are make sure you have an XP machine with AS 4.5, .NET 2.0 Framework, and check as few of the options as you can in your ROM recipe (it's hard cuz like being in a candy store) so that the ROM is not too big.
Check it out this tutorial by Ga.Medic et.al.:
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread...light=gguruusa
Or you can buy Voice Command from Microsoft here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobi...d/default.mspx
It's about $40 and doesn't announce right in headset in WM5.