scott@spectra.com (Tim Scott) (12/11/90)
Could anyone offer comments about Caere's new "Typist" product?
For instance, how does it compare with OmniPage, what graphics
capabilities does it have, are there any reviews published?
The local guy who Caere said could demo it for me has not yet returned
my call. The retailers who sell it do not offer a satisfaction
guarantee. I wouldn't buy it without trying it, but so far I can't
see how to do that.
Send me email if you feel your comments are too controversial to
post. I will respect your privacy unless you state your views
can be summarized and reposted.
Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.
--
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Tim P Scott . . sending from: Spectragraphics Corp.
9707 Waples St., San Diego CA 92121 [USA]+619-587-6834
Try: scott@spectra.com or ...{ucsd!}nosc!spectra!scottBPorter@world.std.com (Barry M Porter) (12/12/90)
I tried Typist for a total of 6 hours and didn't like it..OmniPage BLOWs it away...I would not recommend this product for anything but the most basic ocr...one big problem is that it can't do a whole page, even in chunks...and its size is too big for most columns, so it picks up a lot of "garbage"...which slows it down...Omnipage on the other hand is well worth it.....Barry
midkiff@portia.Stanford.EDU (Neil Midkiff) (12/12/90)
In article <1990Dec10.224843.2857@spectra.com> scott@spectra.com (Tim Scott) writes: >Could anyone offer comments about Caere's new "Typist" product? I played with one at ComputerWare in Palo Alto (on a IIfx) and was underwhelmed by its lack of accuracy (though amazed at its speed and relatively low cost). Caveat: I did not read the manual, but was assisted by an apparently well-informed salesperson, who got it working better than on my first tries. Although the literature claims that it will recognize any "non-stylized" font, some of the fonts on their own glossy flyer seemed to confuse it somewhat. At best it did about 99.5% (i.e. one error per 200 characters). At this point I concluded that it wasn't ready for prime time yet. If this was obviously the result of some maladjustment, I'm sure that other users will correct this in followups, and I apologize if this is not a complete picture. But based on what I know now, it's not on my I-want-one-for-Christmas list. -Neil
frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick) (12/13/90)
In article <1990Dec10.224843.2857@spectra.com> scott@spectra.com (Tim Scott) writes: >Could anyone offer comments about Caere's new "Typist" product? I bought Typist about six weeks ago. I just returned it. It simply would not work with my system (Mac IIsi). Caere's tech. support line was always busy, so I left a message almost every day for two weeks. They have yet to return any of those calls. Once, I decided to stay on hold (for 45 min., long distance) until I got through. The tech. person walked me through a series of experiments (motsly removing every init and scsi device) with no success. He promised "to get to the bottom of this" and phone me back. That was three weeks ago. Anyway, that's my experience. I think I'll probably try a third-party hand-held scanner (like the Logitech) and a stand-alone OCR program. (Any advice on this combination would be appreciated. In retrospect, this is probably a better idea. Typist's image scanning abilities are minimal, and its only 300dpi.) -- Frank Kolnick, Basis Computer Systems Inc. UUCP: {allegra, linus}!utzoo!mnetor!frank
fleming@cup.portal.com (Stephen R Fleming) (12/13/90)
I'm waiting for the Typist II. (And, no, I haven't heard a thing from Caere about it. It just seems logical.) Apparently, the OCR is flat-out wonderful. The problem is graphics... all it knows about is 300-dpi 1-bit TIFF. No greyscale, no 72-dpi option (to save disk space), no nothing. So, it's probably adequate for line art but impossible for photographs. If they'd fix that, I'd own one today. +------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Stephen Fleming | In ten years, computers will just be | | fleming@cup.portal.com | bumps in cables. --Gordon Bell | | CI$: 76354,3176 +---------------------------------------| | BIX: srfleming | My employers may disagree vehemently. | +------------------------+---------------------------------------+