ScanSoft OmniPage 15 OCR review:1 stars (Unstable, expensive support) - I purchased this product two weeks ago to convert some PDF files to searchable format. When I could get the OCR to start it did a good job of converting the text. The interface was difficult to use, and in about 20% of the runs the application would hang before beginning the conversion. When I attempted to use set up batch scans the system crashed while I was configuring it in 100% of the runs.
I would have reported the problem to technical support, but the publisher charges per incident. To be fair they do offer to wave the charge for the first incident, but since the program crashed in the first five minutes of use it seemed like I would be contacting support more than once. I finally took advantage of the 30-day money back guarantee (I'd highly recommend checking that this applies if you're thinking about buying the program) and purchased Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 instead.4 stars (Appears to be a significant improvement over OmniPage 14) - I have just purchased this upgrade, so the following comments should be viewed as preliminary. Still, some information is better than none.
Having used OmniPage since its beginning, I have been irritated by the company's practice of releasing software before it has driven the bugs out. That does not appear to be a problem in this case. The software loaded cleanly and came up and works properly.
As one would expect after 15 shots at it, character recognition is generally excellent.
The big advance is in speed of operation. Compared to ver. 14, this version flies, which will probably be the improvement of greatest interest to users.
The interface remains non-user-friendly. New users will go crazy trying to figure out how to use it, but once you do, it's worth it.
