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| Pagis Pro Millenium Scanning Suite | Imaging |
 If you are just branching out into the area of scanning
technology or want to break away from your old, out-dated scanning software you currently
have and start fresh with something new, Pagis Pro’s Millennium Scanning Suite is
something you should consider. ScanSoft has put together a smooth suite of software to
answer your scanning needs in a small law office or huge law firm. It isn’t a suite
that will overwhelm you either.The Millennium Scanning Suite includes TextBridge (for OCR of paper documents), Kai’s PhotoSoap2 (to enhance and repair your photos), Pagis Pro 3.0 (organizes your scanned documents visually), Copier (makes copies of documents right from your desktop) and Forms (to quickly scan, tab and type to quickly fill in paper forms). These aren’t the lightweight versions of various software packages thrown into a “suite” bundle, but the full versions of each. Installation of the Millennium Scanning Suite is simple and virtually hassle-free as long as you remember to keep the installation and troubleshooting tips sheet, which is included in case you run into some conflicts with other software you have already loaded on your system. Just make sure you have a lot of space available on your hard drive. It takes up about 220 MB to load everything that’s included. Installation is probably the quickest of most other suite software that I have had experience installing. Once installation was completed, I simply entered Pagis Pro and began setting up my scanner with the new software. The setup process is easy and doesn’t require you to be any sort of guru. Several scanner diagnostics are conducted so that Millennium Scanning Suite will know the capabilities of your existing scanner. All you have to do is follow the on-screen instructions and dialog boxes to tailor the suite to your scanner. When the scanner diagnostics are completed, you’re ready to begin scanning, in just minutes. I’m always skeptical of the OCR claims that many software vendors make of documents being OCR’d within 99 percent accuracy. That’s the first test I wanted to try, so I randomly grabbed a document from my desk and scanned it. The layout screen for Pagis Pro is really smooth with the function tabs at the top for Scan, Copy, Fax and Web. I clicked on “scan” and selected my “page type” and where I wanted to “scan to,” which was to WordPerfect 8. After the document was scanned into Pagis Pro, I dragged it to the WordPerfect 8 icon at the bottom of the screen. The lofty claim of 99 percent accuracy is a little ambitious. I didn’t have to correct any spelling errors, but the formatting was not anywhere near 99 percent or even 75 percent. It took a little retyping to fix my document. As with most OCR software, you’ll have to tweak it a bit to acclimate it to your word processing software with a minimal amount of retyping. Although the OCR was a bit of a disappointment, the other features were quite impressive. The copier mode was effective and enlarges or shrinks documents or photos that can be sent to your printer. This is helpful if you need to scan a photo or document directly to the printer or e-mail it. Kai’s PhotoSoap2 software portion of the suite is helpful for guiding you in correcting some photo discrepancies, which may be too dark, too light or contain other imperfections. If you have a digital camera, you can use PhotoSoap2 to make professional-looking materials, such as brochures or advertisements for your firm. I was pleasantly surprised by the forms fill-in feature in the suite package. I picked out a form that really was not of great quality, yet the forms fill-in feature scanned the form in and detected the areas on the form that I needed to fill-in. I simply typed and tabbed to the next area. Once I completed the information that I needed to input, I simply printed the form. There wasn’t any need to adjust anything or scan it to my word processing software. Pagis Pro 3.0 pulls it all together and really is your starting point in the suite of software that’s offered by ScanSoft. Pagis is laid out so you can organize your documents and photos on a desktop view with template folders, or you can create your own folders to organize your Pagis Pro desktop. You also can search your documents by keyword. When you find the document or photo you need, you can simply drag and drop word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and Web pages to the appropriate application as well as e-mail applications including Microsoft Outlook, America Online, Eudora and Netscape Mail. You can even give it a try; if it doesn’t make the cut for your team, ScanSoft offers a 60-day, money-back guarantee if you order it through their online store. |
ScanSoft Inc. (978) 977-2000 www.scansoft.com Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/2000 Professional $99.99 Reviewed by Milton Hooper, litigation support specialist, Macon, Ga. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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