Amazon.com Review

For optical character recognition (OCR) software to be more effective than hiring a fast typist, it has to be very accurate. It also helps if it can recognize a range of languages. FineReader Pro 5.0 comes with support for more than a hundred languages, although it spell checks only around 25 of the more common ones. It also recognizes programming languages like Java and Pascal.

The quality of recognition of the English texts tested was high--selected texts, from magazines, newspapers, and printouts, required little editing. FineReader Pro 5.0 saves images from the source documents as well as text, recognizes formatting such as column breaks, and will recognize tables. You can send scanned material to the clipboard for pasting into any editor you choose, or send it directly to Microsoft Word, Lotus Word Pro, Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarWriter, or Microsoft Excel. It can also be sent straight to e-mail, or saved as HTML.

The more advanced points of FineReader Pro 5.0, such as fine-tuning scanning quality for optimum results and managing tables accurately, require a little practice to master, and the interface is a bit on the cluttered side. However, for standard OCR tasks, FineReader Pro 5.0 is a useful and efficient application. --Sandra Vogel ... Read more

Reviews (19)

2 Thumbs Up!Incredible OCR accuracy. [bye bye scansoft]
I got my first FULL version with the purchase of PC PRO magazine [issue 118, august 2004].[produced by a UK publisher, www.pcpro.uk.co I think]
It simply required a "Free" registration and then the folks at ABBYY sent a serial number to make it a FULLY functional program.

I have used several programs, the most recent being textbridge 9 and omnipage 8.0 and 9.0.

But the speed and accuracy of finereader pro 5 just blew me away.

The price of the PC PRO magazine had been like $14.99 at my local bookstore [for both the mag and accompanying CD]. By the time it arrived from the publishers in the UK and was put on display at my local bookstore, it was either Sept or Oct 2004.But the ABBYY software installed and registered flawlessly. [despite the magazine disclaimer to register by aug or sept of 2004]

A couple friends saw the program in action and were equally as awestruck as I was. We ran our own evaluation tests between finereader 5 pro and textbridge, omnipage 8 and 9.

Finereader won in both speed and accuracy. Especially accuracy.

I don't have to tell anyone that uses OCR just how much it BITES if your OCR package reports a high percentage of "unreadables" and/or "mis-reads".
[If there are too many unreadables, you can reach a point in which it becomes easier to just type a document out yourself].

Ok, so my documents did have TONS of acronyms.
But I came close to a blister on my finger, when I kept having to hit the IGNORE button,during my scansoft ocr exercises.

Finereader was about 50% less "unreadables or mis-reads".
[sorry I don't have an EXACT percentage to provide].

I really am thinking aboutanupgrade to finereader 7 [the latest version I think] but with version 5 working so well, I hate to change anything.

2 thumbs up ! Way up! Good job ABBYY.

Absolutely Fabulous
ABBYY FIneReader 5.0 Home Edition is an exceptionally valuable, high quality product a very affordable price.This program is as accurate as any other I have tried, costing far more.It is as easy to use as any other OCR software package out there, and is just as accurate.When considering the price is below ...[undisclosed dollar amount], you cannot go wrong with this product.I quit using TextBridge and Omni Page after trying this product.Those other programs cost three to five times more, and provide no greater productivity.Best ...[undisclosed dollar amount]I have never spent on software.

A solid product
This program is not perfect, but does a real good job most of the time.The interface is straight-forward and it is pretty fast.I would purchase this product again.

Awesome product...stinky customer support
I bought this software, primarily on the basis of the reviews on Amazon.It installed easily...and I should note that although I've used several scanning packages, this is the first one I've bought.The capabilities of the software are truely awesome...some real virtuousity is clearly evident.Tables and text scan easily and flawlessly into every kind of file I can think of.Amazing.

The problem I have with Finereader 5.0 Pro it is really two-fold.First, the manual is pathetic...nowhere would one discover how to use the product, much less what it is capable of delivering, if s/he relied on the manual.It just doesn't make sense and has loads of omissions.Second, the email support is literally useless...I don't really think there is anything but an email address at the other end...No response, at all.I was about 15 minutes from returning the whole box when I tried something completely illogical to change the scanner settings, when, Voila!The thing started working.

Whatever, you do...don't rely on the manual.A good technical writer with several weeks' experience with this package could earn this company a lot of grateful and loyal customers.Are you ABBYY guys listening?

beware of patches on website for NEW software
I wish I had checked out the Abbyy website before I bought this. I might have been tipped off to potential problems if I had noticed not one but two separate patches to make this version work on my relatively new computer. But I didn't, and all I saw were the glowing reviews on Amazon. I have a standard, new-ish computer, and above-avg skills. I cannot get this program to work at all. The patches have been installed multiple times, and the program itself has been installed & reinstalled multiple times.

Here's the worst part, however: emails to the company get nowhere. I've emailed several different addresses w/in the company, as indicated on the website, and have gotten no where. Their junk emails to me get well enough, though. I've tried to call, but never seem to hit any time when a person is there. Go figure.

The upshot: don't get ripped off by this company. Once they have your money, they do not give a rat's behind whether the product works. Who knows? Maybe it really did work for all of the other people who reviewed it on this site. But I'm a little skeptical...I don't remember if anyone mentioned patches in their reviews. And I don't believe it is possible to install this program, on any machine no matter how old, w/o downloading a patch from the ABBYY website.

My ultimate review: RUN LIKE THE WIND FROM THIS PRODUCT. ... Read more

Features

• New templates and Express Check Designer helps you design the perfect checks every time
• Print out informative business reports for your home or business
• Create personal and business-size checks, for printing or sending by email
• Schedule your bill payments for accurate, on-time payments of outstanding or upcoming invoices
• Simple one-pass check printing from Quicken, Quickbooks and Money

Reviews (6)

TextBridge that goes nowhere
This product is completely worthless. I am pretty good w/ computer hard/software but I wasted far too much time trying to get this program to work decently. The writers of this program must have dropped acid while they were writing the code for TextBridge...and I trusted the Xerox name. Shame on me!

What I get for not listening . . .
I read all the other reviews on Amazon, and I bought this software anyway. What a mistake. I had installation problems as well (running Windows 2000 Professional and Office 2000 Premium). I kept getting some sort of registry error, and each time I got the error I was told to reboot my machine (which is only 2 months old). However, when I was finally able to get the software to work (which wasn't long because it kept crashing), I discovered that the accuracy stinks. There is NO way this software is "over 99% accurate" as it advertised. I have a limited edition version of OmniPage 7.0 that came with another scanner that is more accurate than this software. And, don't think that what I was scanning was complicated. It was black and white, plain vanilla text on clean paper. Don't make the same mistake I did in buying this software. You'll regret it. ...

Amazing Software that works!
This software does what it is suppose to do.It takes scanned text and converts it to editable text.I have never seen a piece of software so inexpensive that actually works!

Better yet, it can auto-detect zones.The software knows where the graphics are and where the text are.I love it because I do not want to do that myself.

I would rate that the Optical Character Recognition is the closest to 100% perfect!The best results come from grayscale 300 dpi settings.

I would recommend this to anyone.

Don't buy this software
This software is majorly messed up.When it works it does what it says, but it's a major pain to get it to work.It's constantly giving me errors and refusing to scan.This was the worst software purchase I've ever made.It doesn't even deserve the one star minimum.

TextBridge Pro Millennium
TextBridge Pro Millennium was a big disapointment.First of all it was the installation phase, it seems that when it reaches the part where it goes to add TextBridge menu to Word 2000, it fails and produces an error,then exits setup.Second, There's a major glitch in the software and Idon't think the company is able to resolve it. I have been communicatingwith them for months with no solution.Third, everytime you contact/emailcustomer support, you get a different person handling your problem (it isnot like your file/problem is assigned to one person).Fourth, theironline help or support material relates to an older version. My advise:==> look somewhere else ! ... Read more

Product Description

Create professional quality forms for home and office use! Select from over 400 professionally designed form templates and use powerful editing tools to make forms custom tailored to your needs. ... Read more

Features

• Easy exporting into MS Word, WordPerfect, Excel and MS Office 2000
• This double-shot of scanning software features FineReader 4.0 and Formulator 2.5
• With FineReader 4.0 you can scan and save your important documents with a minimum of fuss and no errors
• One-button scanning and recognition that saves results in. TXT or as a. RTF file
• Unrecognized characters are highlighted in bold for manual alterations

Product Description

Makes writing important business letters easy! Letter categories include: banking, customer relations, general forms, human resources, personal relationships, legal, sales & marketing, and supplier relations. ... Read more

Product Description

Save Hours Reporting Meetings & Coordinating Projects! Finally, you can record, report and track the progress of the results of your meetings effectively with 2 Action Meeting 3. Save hours after each meeting! Just click and detailed reports are generated giving you an instant snapshot of what was said and what progress is being made. Share your reports and everyone involved in your project will understand what's going on as well. Handheld Software Included Prepare agenda items, make sketches, assign people to tasks and manage their progress all from this powerful application on your handheld. Now with Treo navigation features, large screen support, keyboard support and tap and hold shortcuts. Desktop Software Included * Above report created with Themes Plus for 2Action Meeting. The powerful, easy to use 2Action Meeting Desktop software for your PC or Laptop lets you generate professional reports from your handheld notes in seconds. Tidy up notes made in meetings and e-mail professional reports with a click of your mouse. Save hours of typing, mailing and faxing while managing projects. Features Post edit meetings on your PC Export Meetings to HTML Export Drawings to JPEG Assign people to tasks Imports existing Palm Address Book contacts Conduit transfers meeting details between your PC and Handheld Supports color and black/white handhelds Supports 320 x 480 pixel screens Benefits Simple, intuitive, high qu ... Read more

Features

• Ram Used: 251
• Resolutions: Sony Hi-Res (320x320), Sony Hi-Res+ (320x480), Palm Hi-Res (320x320), Palm Standard (160x160), Palm Hi-Res (320x480), Palm Hi-Res Landscape (320x480), Tapwave Full Screen (480x320), Tapwave (320x320)

Product Description

Make Your Sales Catalog Mobile! High Quality Product Images Great looking product images that use a tiny fraction of memory compared to uncompressed pictures means you can take more with you when it matters most. Item Price Breaks Quick product details with support for multiple price breaks for each of your products or services! Real-time "What if" Scenarios Try various quote, order, and invoice scenarios while your client watches! Find the perfect mix of products, quantities and discounts to land the deal. Accept Payments and Validate Credit Card No.s With support for accepting Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, Carte Blanche, enRoute, JCB and Discover credit cards, as well as Cash and Checks, there's no more missed opportunities while you're away. Purchase Order Authorization Support for digital signatures means that you've got the go ahead immediately. Generate a purchase order back in the office, e-mail the document as a PDF attachment, complete with signature, to Accounting and you're done! Convert Existing Quotes to Orders/Invoices Instead of constantly remaking quotes into purchase orders or invoices, simply click convert and have 2Action Sales track all information to its conclusion. ... Read more

Features

• Ram Used: 233
• Resolutions: Sony Hi-Res (320x320), Palm Hi-Res (320x320), Palm Standard (160x160)

Product Description

Calculator & universal Converter ***** rated by ZDNet - Intuitive Calculator with instant conversion in 3 different units - 2 big displays for main units and a 3rd line for custom calculations (tax, discount, etc.) - Up to 160 currencies. Weekly update via Internet or manual editing on your PDA, or even in the dedicated Excel tool - Major units for temperatures, lengths, areas, volumes, speeds, masses, energy, power, pressure, etc. - 2 calculation modes: postfix, ie RPN (2 Enter 3 +), and algebraic (2 + 3 =) - Double precision Maths : +, -, x, /, +/-, %, 1/x and sqrt - Clear and Sto/Rcl Memory, and full Cut and Paste Support - Automatic settings according to System preferences (country and number formats) FREE demo version for evaluation, with just a limited number of digits for number entries. ... Read more

Features

• Ram Used: 64
• Resolutions: Sony Hi-Res (320x320), Palm Hi-Res (320x320), Palm Standard (160x160)

Features

• Ram Used: 0
• Resolutions: Palm Standard (160x160)

Reviews (5)

It might have been the best ever !
But there was no product serial # in the box, on the CD, in the manual or on the CD jacket. Box had not been tampered with. I could not install it because the serial # is required for the installation let alone evaluate it.

Gives you a low-cost, high-performance OCR package
Abbyy's Home Edition follows the trend of software publishers to milk previous versions of their software, in this case, Abbyy's Finereader 5.0 (the current version for those with lots of money being 6). The OCR engine is solid, and the "1-button" interface is uncomplicated.

When it's time to move beyond the 1-button world, the product has a number of beyond-the-basic features, including the ability to manually identify regions of text, tables, and graphics. For much of today's complex and graphic-intensive layouts, you'll find yourself using this mode, if only to avoid annoying glitches such as parts of dense tables showing up as graphics
in the recognized file, or side-by-side columns becoming tables.

Home Edition handles both scanned files (...) and a wide range of graphic files that contain text. Fortunately, although the manual states that Home Edition recognizes only the first page of multi-page graphics files, that's not true -- all the pages of multi-page FAX TIFF files are recognized.

Recognition is good. For scans at normal resolution, 300 dpi, the total number of errors per page for a mix of type from 9 down to 7 points -- pretty small for OCR -- were the same as my old, 1999 Scansoft Textbridge Pro 8.0. However, the Home Edition errors were far easier to fix ("S" for "$" on small, 7-point type for AHE, less annoying to me than the strange concatentions or "wordifications" for TP8 (such as "Pap er" or "andPublish"). When the same material is scanned into Home Edition at 600 dpi (to add detail to the very small type), errors dropped to half that of Textbridge, which doesn't accept scans of this resolution.

A very difficult case, a second-generation FAX of a magazine article originally in tabloid and reduced to 8 1/2 x 11, was recognized surprisingly well with Home Edition, despite the fact that the type was fuzzy and 4-6 points in size -- and the bioprocessing subject matter had out-of-the-ordinary words. However, the 1-button process made tables of some of the columns, so manual marking of the original was needed.

I miss the ability to view the original scan during proof-reading in Textbrige (and the Abbyy higher-end products) -- as you move the cursor through the recognized document, these show you the same area of the scanned file. In Home Edition, you have to move between the scan and the recognized windows and find your own place. There's also no built-in spell-checker, an odd omission considering the low cost of licensing spellchecking code these days. Perhaps Abbyy is justifying the gap in pricing between Home Edition (less than[$$]) and the Professional line ([$$-$$] at the Abbyy site store). Versus the Pro Edition, Home Edition has 12 languages (121 for Pro); no pattern training for symbols; and no background or batch mode. There's apparently fewer options with HE's manual layout analysis than for the Pro Edition, but the HE options are just fine for most purposes.

Abbyy HE saves recognized text as ASCII TXT, Word, Excel, Word Pro and Word Perfect files, plus HTML and Adobe PDF. The good OCR engine, the ability to handle multiple types of graphics files, and to preserve graphics color, plus its straight-forward interface all make this a good product.

Abbyy Finereader 5.0 Home Edition
This is an example of getting what you pay for. Maybe the Professional editions would work better I do not recommend buying the Home edition. The limited edition of Omipage that came with my scanner does a better job.

Unbelievable accuracy!
I don't think there is a reader out there that can hold a candle to this program. The easiest to work with for ANYONE. You can scan all the pages and then proccess them or scan, read and spell check each as you go along.Then you simply tell it to put it in Word or your clipboard and it will put one or all the pages into one easy to use, or print format.Minimal mistakes, usually caused by poor scanning settings or dirty copy.I tried the try and buy program first and couldn't imagin being without it!

Great Software
I bought a Lexmark X73 and I was just scanning some documents,then it said that the Abbyy Finereader 5.0 software came with it so I used it.The software let me correct things on my documents and other reports that were messed up.If you are looking for a software to correct reports or other documents I highly recommend Abbyy Finereader 5.0. ... Read more

Amazon.com Product Description

Abbyy Fine Reader 5.0 Office is optical character recognition (OCR) software designed for work in the office. The Office version is specially designed for a network. Once installed on the server, it can be installed on workstations directly over the network. Images can be processed on several workstations simultaneously, allowing users to scan on one workstation and recognize them on another. With multiprocessing support, recognition speed is increased in direct proportion to the number of processors installed.

A built-in editor lets users edit the image layout manually. Edit recognized text while looking at an image of the source text in the Zoom window. The built-in spell checker will search text for misspelled words in mere seconds. Included with the Office version is the Formulator, which lets users fill in any form electronically. Just scan in a blank form and have it completely filled in onscreen and printed out in seconds. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

FineReader tops OmniPage-10
I've been using Omni-10 and recently was about to remove the old Presto from my harddrive. However, I ran across the new ABBYY FineReader Office and gave it a try. For my money, it's a LOT better than Omni-10 (don't know about -11 except that it's costly).

FineReader doesn't have the text-to-voice of Omni, but I don't do any recognition of tables (where the feature is supposed to be valuable) anyway. FR's character recognition is superior, but the best feature is that it chooses a font size and kerning that really do an excellent job of reproducing the original (not choosing too-small font sizes with giant spaces, like Omni-10).

Overall, beats Omni-10 -- which in turn beats everything else! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Not Multilingual dictionary! Only set bilingual dictionaries
The is not Multilingual dictionary. The is set of bilingual obsolete dictionaries of 70 - 80 years: English-Russian, German-Russian, French-Russian. And the subjects of the dictionaries surprises, for example there is a English-Russian dictionary on business, and French-Russian dictionary on business is not present. Bad fonts-support. ... Read more

Product Description

Best Software ACT! for Palm OS DVD case .ACT! for Palm OS is the first-ever, complete contact management system designed specifically for Palm OS handhelds. It is ACT! on the Palm and comes complete with a powerful contact database that tracks notes, histories, activities, and sales opportunities for your best contacts along with a linked calendar and task list - all integrated into one easy-to-use application. Now you can have your ACT! with you everywhere - whether in the office or on-the-go!ACT! for Palm OS System RequirementsHandheld Device:⢠Palm OS version 3.5, 4.0, 4.1, and 5.0. ⢠400K free memory plus an additional 1K for each contact ⢠8MB, 33 MHz processor device recommended ⢠For special pricing on devices compatible with ACT! for Palm OS, click here.Windows Desktop:⢠ACT! 6.0 or ACT! Express (included free with ACT! for Palm OS). Previous versions of ACT! are not compatible. ⢠Microsoft Windows 98/Me/NT4/2000/XP ⢠133 MHz processor or higher ⢠64MB of memory or higher ⢠VGA or higher monitor resolution ⢠50MB of free hard disk space ⢠HotSync version 3.5 or higher ⢠CD drive*Please note, ACT! for Palm OS does not work with ACT! 2005 at this time. We are working on the next version of ACT! for Palm OS, to be introduced at a later date. In the meantime, you can use ACT! Link for Palm OS to link data from ACT! 2005 down to your device. ... Read more