Blankety-blank scanning software!!!

[AZZenny]

I have a Xerox Documate 510 in my home office. Perfectly nice little scanner. It came with Paperport 11 and OmniPro software. I HATE Paperport. It freezes up totally probably 40-50% of the time and then renders my computer unusable for 5-10 minutes while it decides to exit task. I had finally gotten to the point where it's reasonably functional ...other than that little character flaw... but it is not a comfortable program in any way, shape, or form; never has been, and never will be.

I would probably scan 30-40 pages a day if I had a user-friendly program that worked well. It would be mainly mixed printed and hand-written/drawn documents (reports and test data) I need to have in well-organized, high quality format, but scanning is so painful that I've avoided switching to a paperless storage system.

Suggested programs? Anything?

 

[jw7]

This is just IMO, but ditch the scanner and uninstall the software. Go to Fry's Electronics and get a new one. I picked up a copier/scanner/printer for like $70.

Technology is better and they are so easy to replace and cheaper now so that that is what I would do.

 

[AZZenny]

The scanner isn't that old, and the quality is excellent. The scanner isn't the problem. That's why I'd rather try new software first. There are other programs out there, I just was hoping someone here could tell me about what has worked -- for ex., what software does your Fry's machine use? I have to be able to scan photos at good quality, and produce pdf documents from scanned text.

 

[jw7]

The scanner isn't that old, and the quality is excellent. The scanner isn't the problem. That's why I'd rather try new software first. There are other programs out there, I just was hoping someone here could tell me about what has worked -- for ex., what software does your Fry's machine use? I have to be able to scan photos at good quality, and produce pdf documents from scanned text.

It's proprietary. Came with the unit and branded as Canon. I don't think it would work with other hardware.

Sorry, can't help you out. Maybe someone else knows?

 

[AZZenny]

Nuance software just sucks -- PaperPort and Dragon Naturally Speaking. I use Dragon Professional a lot, and it's actually very good at what it does -- for that matter, so is PaperPort -- when they work. They both destabilize and drag the system, freeze up (and this has been true across a couple Windows platforms), are a birch to trouble-shoot, have crappy customer support, and the user interfaces find a way to make the obvious obscure, the logical incomprehensible, and the necessary invisible.

PPort would be very adequate for my scanning needs if it would just WORK reliably. When I look online for why it freezes, I see that I am hardly alone in this, and there are numerous possibilities across platfiorms. I may uninstall the scanner and software and reinstall to see if it improves. Some people online say spring for PaperPort Pro 12, but I hate to go through that if there's a better alternative.