hg0g+@andrew.cmu.edu (Hunter R. Gordon) (03/09/88)
I have a couple questions about text readers. A friend of mine typed about 400 double-spaced pages of a book, and now he wants to put the book on his pc wordprocessor (I don't know which he has). He figures that it'll cost around a dollar a page to hire a typist and he is wondering if there is a cheaper and possibly faster way to do the job. I've heard only a little about text readers and was wondering if anyone knew enough about them to give me some advice. I know that there are some types that aren't as big and expensive as a copier, but use a device similar to a bar code reader to read the text line by line. Some questions I (we) have are: 1) What is available in the text reader market (low and high end)? 2) How much do they cost? 3) Can they be rented, and if so at what price? 4) For anyone in New York City: Does anyone happen to know where a text reader can be used, rented or if cheap, bought? I appreciate any information that can be sent my way (at hg0g+@andrew.cmu.edu). Thanks, Hunter Gordon
farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) (03/16/88)
In article <EWB1qRy00Uw8EoY0Cu@andrew.cmu.edu> (Hunter R. Gordon) writes: > >A friend of mine typed about 400 double-spaced pages of a book, and now he >wants to put the book on his pc wordprocessor (I don't know which he has). He >figures that it'll cost around a dollar a page to hire a typist and he is >wondering if there is a cheaper and possibly faster way to do the job. He might be surprised. I recently typed in a manuscript for a science- fiction author friend, and was amazed to find out that commercial services charged up to $7/page! (I was charging 75 cents/pg. He got a good deal.) >1) What is available in the text reader market (low and high end)? Low end is the line scanner type. They don't work very well. High end is the Kurzweil scanners, they work much better, but you still should count on a couple of errors per page. These devices aren't perfect, by any means. >2) How much do they cost? More than your friend wants to spend. A Kurzweil is several tens of thousands of dollars. The minimal line scanner reader sold for about $400, but I don't know if it's still available. I think it was called the OmniScan, or something like that. >3) Can they be rented, and if so at what price? Copy shops here in the San Francisco Bay Area sometimes have them, as do some word processing services. They generally charge between $1 and $1.50/page for the scanning. -- Michael J. Farren | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just {ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}! | dogmatize it! Reflect on it and re-evaluate unisoft!gethen!farren | it. You may want to change your mind someday." gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame
davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) (03/17/88)
The HP Scanjet scanner is under $2000 (way under if you get a
discount). If ordered during March it includes a document feeder and OCR
software. The software does very poorly on typeset (proportional) fonts,
but quite well for typewritten fonts. Since the original question was
about entering typewritten info, this might be practical.
--
bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
{uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me