[bksvol-discuss] Re: FineReader Still Kicks Butt!

  • From: "Donna Smith" <donnafsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 16:20:43 -0500

Evan, hopefully someone more technically savvy than I can give you an answer
to your very legitimate question.  I can only tell you that FR7 is bundled
with both OpenBook and Kurzweil, and no matter what I do, I can't get the
same results using either of these that I can get using FR7 alone.  It
doesn't make sense to me either.  

 

Donna

 

  _____  

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2006 1:21 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: FineReader Still Kicks Butt!

 

But OpenBook contains Fine Reader as one of its OCR engines.  How can Fine
Reader be more accurate than itself, assuming I choose to use Fine Reader as
the engine to recognize text in OpenBook?  Has Fine Reader degraded the OCR
engine in OpenBook, somehow?

 

Slightly confused.

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Donna <mailto:donnafsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx>  Smith 

To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 3:03 PM

Subject: [bksvol-discuss] FineReader Still Kicks Butt!

 

Those of you who have been on this list for a while will remember that I
have been a confirmed user of an off-the-shelf scanning software package
called FineReader for a few years.  Well as of late, my desktop has been out
of service and I've been using my laptop from work which has Kurzweil 9.0 on
it.  While I've been too busy to do much book scanning, I've nevertheless
been scanning the usual piles of print stuff that comes across my desk both
at work and home and learning to use Kurzweil in the process.  I am duly
impressed with many of the features of Kurzweil, except for the quality of
lengthy scans.  

 

This week I needed to scan a 60 page document for work and was motivated to
search out FineReader again.  I went to their web site www.abbyyusa.com
<http://www.abbyyusa.com/>  and downloaded a trial version of FineReader
8.0.  I am totally blown away yet again!  I've been using FR7, and this
latest upgrade is truly awesome!  

 

In addition to giving the most accurate scan of any software I've ever used
(including OpenBook, OmniPage and Kurzweil), it does some awesome things
with PDF documents and things photo copied on a copier that will save images
as a PDF file.  Even our IT guy at work who is really hard to impress was
amazed!  I plan to purchase the upgrade for myself, and my employer is
buying multiple copies of the software called PDF Transformer at $50 a pop
for transforming hard copy materials into electronic files.  

 

The only downside for those of us who use screen readers is still that once
you've scanned something in, JAWS will not read it from within FineReader.
You have to save it and pull it up in another program such as Word, Notepad
or Kurzweil.  All of the menu options accessed by pressing the Alt key are
accessible, and it is very user friendly to learn and set up.  The cost of
the FineReader 8.0 is $399.99.  

 

If you feel adventurous and want to check it out, go to

 

http://www.abbyyusa.com <http://www.abbyyusa.com/> 

 

and click on Products and then Downloads and try the trial copy for 15 days.


 

I'm really jazzed and am ready to put it to the real test of scanning a
book!

 

Peace and Hope,

 

Donna

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