Greetings Barry and list--

> I've looked back through the list archives and seen that a number of people
> have raved about the pro- versions of various ocr programs.  What I'm
> wondering is whether the lite versions that come bundled with scanners do a
> decent job.  I don't need to have near perfect accuracy, and can deal with a
> little manual editing if it's not too much.
>
> Thanks for any input.
> Barry

My own experience was with OmniPage Lite which came bundled
with a UMAX Astra 2100U scanner. What the lite version had a
problem with, in my case, was any documents with formatting
other than straight paragraphs. Columns, tables, charts, and
even pictures would cause the software to create new pages, so
the final 'scanned-in' document bore no resemblance to the
original, other than the recognized words. This may or may not
be a consideration for you, as OCR software (even lite versions)
have matured considerably since then (ca. 4-5 years ago), as
has the hardware with which it is used.

Hope this has been of some help.

Paul A. Shippert
Library Media Specialist
Margaret Brent Middle School
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