Hi Harvey!

You're right. Most scans aren't good enough to bother saving. 

Scanning envelopes is wise because postal people often drop the wrong mail
in the wrong place.

There are adjustments you can make in the software that can help get a
better read, where they try to do a better job at separating columns, but no
one wants to be messing with that for each page.

Most business people now will be willing to send a bill by Email especially
if you make it a condition of the job, so I rarely have a need for OCR now.
On the odd time that I need to verify mail or occasional products, KNFB
reader on the Iphone does a better job than any of the old stuff. 

I've considered selling the Pearl because neither of us ever use it, but
what would a reasonable price be considering that KNFB reader sometimes
sells for less than $100?

73,
Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Harvey Heagy
Sent: Friday, 9 October 2015 1:11 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT Pearl question

I rarely save scanned documents because there is no such thing as a perfect
scan no matter what you use, and to save it, you usually have to do some
editing.  But that's interesting that someone told you that you had a blank
page when Jaws was reading something.  I wonder if it makes a difference if
the document rests on a flat surface like it would on a scanner bed like
putting it on a table in front of the Pearl's page guide.  They tell you
that you can scan paperback books and folded documents and such in the
guide, but I haven't tried that yet.  But when scanning mail, I like to read
the envelope just to see if it is junk or something I need to take
seriously.
Harvey

-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Dave Allen
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2015 5:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT Pearl question

Hi Harvey!

It isn't about what you can see. Alignment by touch should be easy enough.

Are you getting anything at all with your scan?

If the document print is of poor quality, that will have a negative empact,
although I haven't had too much of that unless I'm getting a bunch of
jibberish.

One caution that I didn't know about for a long time. If you should get
reasonably good results, ou'll easill impress another blind person if you
share the results with them. However your satisfaction won't live long if
you try to show those great results with a sighted person. *lol*

My wife and I scanned all kinds of things over a period of years and shared
it as reasonably as any couple would, not knowing that there was any access
issues with the results we were getting. We just happened to send something
one of us had found interesting to a sighted friend, and they insisted the
page was blank even though Jaws read the results near letter perfect. That's
a different kind of eye opener.

I generally set it up so that scanned documents are saved as Word by
default, but these days, that doesn't mean as much as it used to when you
want to produce the equal document in braille.

I'll be very surprised if there is an Open Book 10.  


Even though you have everything looking correct, choosing a different device
driver may helt.

Good luck whatever happens.

73,
Dave