[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Scanners and Character recognition

ap@deimos.caltech.edu (Alain Picard) (10/08/90)

I would like to know if anyone has experience with scanners
and character recognition software, in particular the
inexpensive had scanner ScanMan by Logitech.

I am not very intersted in scanning pictures; I want
to scan abstracts of papers and so on and put them in
a database, so it needs to be good at character recognition.
I have seen OmniPage work on a Macintosh IIci, and It took about
3 minutes to do the text recognition (with a full page scanner, however).

Can anyone tell me how well the Logitech system works?
85% accuracy? 99% ? Does it take less that 5 min per page, 
say, on a 16Mhz 386SX system ?

Otherwise, what is the cheapest decent system that I can get,
if hand-held scanners are inadequate?

							Alain Picard
E-mail or posting is fine.  Thanks!

mjlanham@eos.ncsu.edu (MICHAEL JAY LANHAM) (10/10/90)

I recall reading a review of Catchword(tm) from Logitech in PC Magazine (?) 
that is specifucally designed to be used with Scanman.  The article gave the
program outstanding reviews.  I think it had teach character font recognition
and a few other bells and whistles.  I do not recall seeing a time
factor presented within the article.  I do know the program costs around
$150 not
counting to $200 or so for the scanner.

I have used the Scanman but only for line art.  For that I can say that
it is very good a capture black and white line art--as for text I don't know.

Best of luck.