I just bought the Canon CanoScan LiDE 80—is there a better example of a braindead product name than that?—from Amazon for $124.39, which is a smoking hot deal considering the free shipping and all. I decided that I also needed to upgrade the scanning software included (ScanSoft’s OmniPage SE) from the lite version to something more sophisticated.
Upon further investigation, I came to the conclusion that OmniPage Pro for X wasn’t for me. I want software that is very much ready for OS X and sports a genuine OS X look and feel. From what I can tell, OmniPage had neither quallity. Luckily, I stumbled onto ReadIRIS Pro 9, which has gotten some rave reviews.
OCR software is very expensive: the OmniPage upgrade alone was $99. ReadIRIS—what is it with these stupid names—retails for $129 but Amazon is selling it for $99 and they’re offering a $75 mail-in rebate! Let me tell you, folks, it doesn’t get any better (or cheaper) than that!
I’ll devote a future entry to reviewing these two products. I want to scan in reams of historical documents for a major project I’m undertaking but I also need to scan in pictures of my two little angels from time to time. This combination seems like a perfect fit, but I’ll let you know.