A system for operating an electronic device enabling the same agent software to be used in common among a plurality of devices, where a car navigation system or audio system, when the agent software and voice recognition engine are transferred from a portable data terminal, runs the transferred agent software so as to display a simulated human animated character which converses with a user, recognizes speech obtained from that conversation by a voice recognition engine, prepares script reflecting the content of the conversation, and executes the prepared script to perform predetermined processing.