Readiris Pro 7.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Waited almost a year to get this product at a sale price.
When I got it, the joy of finally acquiring it very quickly passed.
The first problem occured during setup.
You are asked to choose your scanner "brand" from a drop-down menu list.
They had tons of choices for:
- HP
- Agfa
- Black widow ?
As for the rest of the scanner world:
1 choice for umax
1 for microtek
1 for Niscan
1 for Canon
1 for Silitek
As for VISIONEER; NOTHING! Zilch! Zip! Nada !
Unbelievable!
One of the most marketed scanners in office stores or online, and readiris can't see fit to include even ONE driver choice;
not even a "generic visioneer" choice.
I figured they had at least added a "patch" or such at their website. NOPE!
Nothing over at their website [support section] either.
I have owned like 4 visioneers over the past 6-8 years.
And 1 canon and 1 umax.
The point being, Visioneer is EVERYWHERE !
They might not be the world's BEST scanners, but they are a large part of the "middle-of-the-road" consumer marketplace.
Perhaps IF readiris was some sort of "worldclass" product,
then maybe [a BIG maybe], they could get away with such a "primadonna" sort of attitude.
But common-sense business practice says to "market to the masses". [Anyone that doesn't better have such a whiz-bang product that they are backlogged with orders and customers are beating down their doors. I doubt Readiris has either such situation].
Anyway, the evaluation :
1. driver choices - poor.
After choosing a "twain-generic" type of scanner choice, I was able to scan my test page.
2. OCR ability - The OCR capabilities was one of the lamest I have ever used.
I even chose a different scanner "type" or driver, but no improvement.As for OCR, I have done better with the "bundled" software that came with any of my scanners. Meaning, those "Limited editions" that the scanner companies include. [not full versions, normally].
3. rating of packages I've personally tested:
I have used a lot of different packages and here is my list of grades, from worst to best:
1. worst - readiris 7 pro
2. middle of the road -
"bundled softwares" - that come with scanners
3. Above average - omnipage, Textbridge, Pagemanager
4. Very good - the Adobe Elements 2.0 bundle that came with my Canon Lide scanner.
5. 5-star favorite.
ABBYY Finereader Pro Version 5
I used only the older version 5 pro, so far.
WOW ! I was blown away by the accuracy of OCR.
It even beat out omnipage 8 and 9.
Co-workers/friends that saw my finereader pro vs their omnipage were equally impressed. They immediately asked their supervisors to get it for them. Luckily ABBYY offers "competitive upgrades", from ANY brand OCR software to finereader pro. [ABBYY finereader is VERY liberal in competitive upgrades. ANY OCR product qualifies. Now THAT is A+ customer service and marketing].
Maybe Readiris will improve, but version 7 was a dismal showing.

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Readiris Pro 7 is OCR software that converts your everyday printed documents,such as letters, faxes, magazine articles, and columns in a newspaper, intoeditable text files with a high rate of recognition accuracy. Readiris Pro 7features a number of easy-to-use tools to convert documents into electronicfiles, including PDF files. The new OCR engine in version 7 increases the OCRaccuracy by 40 percent above Readiris Pro 6.
It features automatic detection of font mode, improved recognition of light text with brokencharacters, improved recognition of dark text with touching characters,improved recognition of text with speckles, and improved recognition ofunderlined text. Readiris Pro 7 recognizes documents captured with digitalcameras, documents scanned in color, including text on color backgrounds,and saves pictures in color. It detects the orientation of the scanned documentand automatically rotates the page for the best OCR accuracy.

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ScanSoft PDF Converter Professional 3.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Overall, this is a good product - with a few kinks. I agree with the one reviewer who commented on the lack of product support. The online PDF file just does not cut it. It tells you many things that the software can do but then fails to provide the "how to." Granted, it is a fairly simple program but the documentation is still lacking. The knowledge base is also less than adequate. As another reviewer mentioned, I also was unable to preserve links in any document conversion I tried - yes, I checked the document settings. When you go to the ScanSoft knowledge base and type in "link", you are presented with two solutions that simply do not work. I eventually found that the way to get the links to work - converting or printing from any source - was to 1) get the document converted over into PDF using PDF Converter Pro 2) manipulate and edit the document to your liking in PDF Converter Pro - they do have some get features here that blow Adobe away when you consider the price and the software footprint 3) save the document as PDF 4) then open the document up in Adobe Reader 7. Adobe Reader recognizes the links, PDF Converter Pro does not - this is a severe mistake on ScanSoft's part and you will not find this solution in their knowledge base (at least not at this time). For a while, I had PDF Converter Pro act as my default PDF reader, but then found it did not open links - went back to Adobe Reader - ScanSoft is now just an intermediary tool when they could have been a real challenge to Adobe. The two other things I don't like about ScanSoft is that 1) they charge $9.95 - which I refuse to pay - for technical support that should be included in a product manual 2) their registration procedure is not even disguised to look like they are actually taking in information for product affiliated reasons - it is a blatant market survey - and what is worse if you do try to register more than one product, they will ask you the same myriad questions each time. Other than that, it is a good product and does cut through a lot of the mess with document formatting and organization.
One last note - if you are going to upgrade - remove all previous versions first (along with the assistants) via add/remove programs, reboot, and then install - all windows apps need to be closed.


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ScanSoft PDF Converter Professional gives you everything you need to create, convert and edit PDF files — all within a single, easy to use application. Create high-quality PDF files from any PC application, complete with full color, watermarks and bookmarks. Turn existing PDF files into fully-formatted Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Corel WordPerfect documents, complete with text, columns, tables and graphics. And for the 1st time ever, static PDF forms can be turned into fillable forms — all with a single mouse click. What's more, you also get the amazing ability to quickly and easily edit PDF files — from moving graphics to replacing text to adding highlights and sticky notes. Combine all of this with the new PDF Converter Professional mark-up tools, commenting and cutting-edge security features, and you truly have "Better PDF for Business” more productively and efficiently compressed file sizes, font embedding, full color support, page merging and much more!

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Nitro PDF Professional Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Nitro PDF Professional
Acrobat and PDF have been a mainstay in our electornic document workflows for many years.
Since Nuance's PDF Converter and Nitro PDF were both released earlier this year, I have had them both installed within our organisation in order to rate them for prospective roll out through many more seats than what we currently have Acrobat installed on.
The first thing we noticed was that they both used the same base technology that provides the viewing, creation and editing functionality. (As such some of the reviews comparing the two seem somewhat odd!)
There were however differences.
Nuance PDF Converter includes a tool called 'FormTyper' which basically assists you in adding form fields to your PDF documents. The upside is that it can save you some time when building your interactive PDF forms, but you can also use the standard form tools to add form fields (I found this to also be in Nitro).
Nitro PDF includes a comprehensive set of neat new plug-ins that we have found really beneficial to our business. The Optimize Document feature (like the PDF Optimizer in Acrobat) allowed us to dramatically reduce the size of our PDFs, and the Split File feature breaks down some of our massive PDF files into smaller individual files.
Furthermore, Nitro PDF has released a number of updates to their product since we purchased. Some have fixed bugs and others have added functionality. The next to last release led to us having trouble with activation even though we had the product for more than 5 months. Since then they have released a new update which has rectified those problems and added further functionality. Not all updates have been perfect, but we prefer to have software that is continually being improved. There have been no updates to Nuance PDF Converter since we purchased.
FWIW We have just decided to roll out Nitro PDF because the feature set worked better with our day to day requirements for PDF workflow.
I would recommend trialing both products in order to decide which you would use.
Hope this helps.
=====================
Update: Jan 2008
Nitro PDF released a new version (5.3) of the software late last year. I have been testing the new version since. The biggest difference is that Nitro PDF is no longer based on the same technology as it previously was. While the functionality is little changed, there are some major differences:
1. The product is far more stable than both the previous versions of Nitro PDF and Nuance PDF Converter that we had tested. After speaking to the Nitro PDF support team on a regular basis (they were helpful) over the last year or so, it is obvious that the developers have taken note of some of the issues with the previous version. This is a big tick!
2. The interface has changed. Frankly, I am somewhat lukewarm to what they have done. It does use the new Vista ribbon interface though, so some may find its progression a good thing ....
3. This version runs a lot faster on my PC than the previous version. Particularly when creating PDF files which is a good thing.
All in all, it is well worth upgrading to this version. Nitro PDF continues to work hard on improving their software
=====================
Update: May 2010
I have updated this review on the page for the new version 6 Nitro PDF Professional V6


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Create, Convert & Edit PDF Documents 300% Faster than Adobe Acrobat. Nitro PDF Professional is everything you need to create, convert and edit PDF files. All files are 100% industry standard and compatible with other PDF viewers. FEATURES: Fast, High-Quality Document Conversion. Convert any kind of file to PDF - alone or in batch. Convert PDF files back to Word while retaining text, graphic and pages. Combine multiple documents into one PDF. Convert Word, Excel®, and Powerpoint® to PDF with one click. Convert paper to PDF by scanning and converting documents. Comment and review PDF documents just like paper documents. Insert sticky notes - just like Post-it® notes - on your PDFs. Highlight, underline, and strike-through text on your PDFs. Use pens, shapes, and other drawing tools and apply stamps like “Approved” or “Draft.” Take charge of the PDF document review process - record, view, sort, and import and export comments. Quickly edit any PDF file with the best-in-class manipulation tools. Insert, edit, move, resize, and delete text and graphics in PDFs. Shuffle pages to create client-ready PDF files. Apply headers, footers and watermarks. Insert text, numbering, and graphics in your PDFS. Generate PDF hyperlinks and bookmarks automatically. Protect documents with passwords and digital certificates. Protect your PDFs with powerful 128-bit encryption. You decide if your PDFs can be printed, edited, copied, commented, and more. Use digital signatures and digital IDs to ensure the integrity of your PDFs. Profiles make it easy to apply the right security to your PDFs, every time.

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PDF Converter Professional 7.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)PDF Converter Professional 7.0 is one of several otherwise excellent software packages from Nuance that are let down by the company's draconian approach to software theft.
Like Microsoft and Adobe, Nuance uses an activation process. This is not unreasonable, but, unlike these two, Nuance has a very flaky implementation, prompting me to knock a star off the rating.
The software itself is fine - indeed, it is streets ahead of Acrobat, especially on cost - but after using it for some months it suddenly decided that I had pirated the thing and had installed it on another computer. Nope. I had just added some external drives. The software then interpreted this as a different computer. Even Windows doesn't do that. Adobe fixed similar issues some years ago.
This is by design, according to Nuance's support staff, which told me that "changing parts of the computer will trigger to change the machine finger print and changing the machine finger print will require activation. Using an external hard drive is included on the parts of the computer which change the machine finger print. We apologized but that how our activation works."
This is not how other "activated" software works.
You have to be careful with this activation process. Do it too often - easily done if you turn external drives on and off - and you are deemed to be a software thief and you are locked out of the software that you have paid for.
If you are choosing between different PDF options, you might want to see if the alternative has a more sane approach to activation.
This warning applies to other Nuance packages because they suffer from the same disease. I have had it on OmniPage Professional 17 and Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11, others have been hit on PaperPort Professional V12.0. It would make me think twice about buying future versions.Update: the latest thing to provoke an activation request in PDF Converter 7 was a BIOS update on my computer. Nuance tells me that this is correct. BIOS updates change the machine's fingerprint, so activation is required. Funnily, neither Microsoft nor Adobe see this change as serious enough to warrant reactivation of Acrobat or Windows.


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PDF Converter Professional 7 is the smarter PDF solution for business users. It provides everything you need to convert, edit, share and create PDF files. It features 100% industry-standard PDF--and the most accurate document conversion to editable formats even from within Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. With more productive scanning, advanced PDF search and expanded multimedia support to include Microsoft Silverlight users can create, convert, edit, assemble and securely share PDF files for enhanced productivity and collaboration.
Convert PDF and XPS documents into editable Corel WordPerfect or Microsoft Office formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, with a single click.

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Nitro PDF Professional V6 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The best of the bunch I tested for home office use.
I use PDF creation way more than I thought I would. I hardly ever print out web pages anymore, I've possibly saved enough on toner to pay for the program, if not, I will.
I purchased Nitro PDF Pro 6 after I tested the trial version. I also sampled trial versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro, ABBYY PDF Transformer, PDFill, gDoc Fusion (a unique, very cool application) and Nitro PDF Express. I came to the conclusion that THERE IS NO PERFECT PDF PROGRAM, and suggest you make your choice on how much you will use the program.
Adobe Acrobat Pro is the original. It is the largest, most complete, most complex, and most expensive. It is fairly intuitive if you have used a lot of software. Of all the programs I tested, it would require the most time and effort to become a power user. It is the Big Boy PDF program, but it didn't convert to Word any better than Nitro PDF Pro 6. Actually, none of the programs convert with 100% accuracy. You can get Adobe Acrobat Pro for $125 at a number of sites. If you want the biggest tool box spend the additional $50 and get this one.
ABBYY PDF Transformer works and it come with an add on screen capture utility that allows you make a PDF file of whatever is displayed on your monitor. I thought less of its user interface than the others, I wasn't able to just jump right in and start using it. My biggest dislike is that the program's menus that plug into Word and Excel float on the desktop rather than on Word or Excel's tool bars. I did not check to see if there is a way anchor it.
PDFill did not interest me at all. I didn't test it enough to add comments.
gDoc Fusion is very cool. It is unique in that its interface is like touch technology, and it will work with touch screen monitors. I think it did the poorest job of converting PDF to Word. To be fair, though, it worked OK at converting PDFs generated by gDocs to Word. It is exceptionally good for scrolling through the pages of documents; better than all the rest. Check this one out just see how it works. Its price is comparable and there is a home user license option.
As a home office user, Nitro PDF Pro 6 is the program I liked the best. The interface uses ribbon menus similar to Office 2007. I was able to jump in and start using it. It opens with a tutorial asking what you want to do, create something new, convert something, edit something, combine or split something, sign or add security, or review, etc. Then it opens the instruction on how to do the chosen task. It won't take long for you to turn that opening tutorial off; the program is easy to learn. It converts as well as Adobe Acrobat Pro; though in all it is not as big and powerful (the program is about 1/10th the size). Regarding the files size issue mentioned in other reviews, Nitro Pro PDF6 gives you options. I converted a 98KB Word document using the Web Quality setting, the PDF file was a smaller 35KB. Using the Office Quality setting, the PDF file was a smaller 34KB. Using the Print Quality, the PDF file was a much larger 1.14MB. Nitro PDF Express does the creation and converting as well as the Pro version, but the interface I thought was much weaker. I searched and found a coupon and purchased a license for the Pro version for just $25 more than the Express version. I think the Pro version worth the extra expense.
My primary interest in a PDF application was to get my own documents onto my Kindle (to do so, set the document's font to a 20-24 pt font size and convert it to PDF/A, then, with the Kindle connected to a USB port, copy the PDF document to the Kindle's Document folder), but I have found I use it for saving info from web pages most of all.
UPDATE: Nitro has released a free update to v 6.1.2.1 which has significantly increased the speed of the program. It is noticably faster now.

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Nitro PDF professional, the complete Adobe Acrobat alternative, enables you to do more with PDF using powerful tools to create, convert, edit, combine, secure, annotate, form-fill, and save 100% industry-standard PDF files.

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