What version of OCR?

I plan to purchase an All In One (HP, Epson, Lexmark,etc) and as I read
about the various products, they all come with OCR software but they do not
specify the version. Do they come with the same version you see advertised
on the OCR's website? Or do they come with some watered down version that
is made available to the All In One sellers?

For instance, Epson comes with Presto OCR. However, when you go to the
Presto website, they have several Presto OCR Pro versions. Not just Presto
OCR as mentioned in the Epson product description.

Scanning with a good OCR package to facilitate MS word editing is most
important.

Thanks in advance for your help, ideas or suggestions.

Bill

On Tue, 4 May 2004 20:58:39 -0400, "Bill & Debbie"
<billdeb@sccoast.net> wrote:

>I plan to purchase an All In One (HP, Epson, Lexmark,etc) and as I read
>about the various products, they all come with OCR software but they do not
>specify the version. Do they come with the same version you see advertised
>on the OCR's website? Or do they come with some watered down version that
>is made available to the All In One sellers?
>
>For instance, Epson comes with Presto OCR. However, when you go to the
>Presto website, they have several Presto OCR Pro versions. Not just Presto
>OCR as mentioned in the Epson product description.
>
>Scanning with a good OCR package to facilitate MS word editing is most
>important.
>
>Thanks in advance for your help, ideas or suggestions.
>
>Bill
>
If you want a good OCR package, check out OmniPage Pro or ABBY
Finereader. Both get high marks from users. For OmniPage Pro, there
probably isn't a better deal than you can get from Wayne Fulton's web
page at www.scantips.com

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill & Debbie" <>
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scanners
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 8:58 PM
Subject: What version of OCR?


> I plan to purchase an All In One (HP, Epson, Lexmark,etc) and as I read
> about the various products, they all come with OCR software but they do
not
> specify the version. Do they come with the same version you see
advertised
> on the OCR's website? Or do they come with some watered down version that
> is made available to the All In One sellers?
>
> For instance, Epson comes with Presto OCR. However, when you go to the
> Presto website, they have several Presto OCR Pro versions. Not just
Presto
> OCR as mentioned in the Epson product description.
>
> Scanning with a good OCR package to facilitate MS word editing is most
> important.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help, ideas or suggestions.
>
> Bill
>
>

Bill,
In the past 11 years, I've had three scanners. Most scanners (at
least bottom-to-middle line) come with the very lower line software's.
My current scanner came with Omni Page Pro an older version. This newer
scanner and software works world's better than my previous 7YO software.

Over this 11 year period I scanned plenty of text and continue to do so. The
text from a variety of sources, dates and qualities.
With a scanner, things are not always as "cut and dry" as one might desire.
A good quality and well recognized text scan is relevant to the quality of
both paper and print of what you scanning from. If the original paper was of
poor quality and bleed or the printer was over inked, your scans are going
to be bad.
I've even had drastic differences in OCR between different pages of the
same publication.

I use Word 2000 however not for OCR, rather I scan into WordPad and then
edit later with Word. Word 2000 would not recognize the OCR software from
either my older scanner or my most recent purchased scanner and it made no
difference if it was my old Win 98 machine or my newer XP machine. I've
grown accustomed to using WordPad so it presents no real issue for me.

My Epson 1640 came with TextBridge, who, if I remember correctly, purchased
Omnipage some years ago. As a result, about five years ago both TextBridge
and Omnipage used the same OCR engine, only the cosmetics differed. I've
had several versions of one or the other over the years, and each worked
better than the previous one.

Generally the OEM versions are less complete than the full engines, but have
the full OCR engine. What's missing often includes direct support for other
companies scanners, non-western language options, etc. Unless you use a lot
of Sanscrit, I wouldn't worry about it.

Don


"Bill & Debbie" <billdeb@sccoast.net> wrote in message
news:c79e7r$ejms$1@news3.infoave.net...
> I plan to purchase an All In One (HP, Epson, Lexmark,etc) and as I read
> about the various products, they all come with OCR software but they do
not
> specify the version. Do they come with the same version you see
advertised
> on the OCR's website? Or do they come with some watered down version that
> is made available to the All In One sellers?
>
> For instance, Epson comes with Presto OCR. However, when you go to the
> Presto website, they have several Presto OCR Pro versions. Not just
Presto
> OCR as mentioned in the Epson product description.
>
> Scanning with a good OCR package to facilitate MS word editing is most
> important.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help, ideas or suggestions.
>
> Bill
>
>

I like Abbyy FineReader. Ver. 6.0 is a little better than 5.0, 7.0 not
much different, or even a step backwards, in terms of
accuracy/formating, imo.