Of all computing activities anticipated by novices, Optical Character Recognition and speech recognition have traditionally caused the most confusion and been the most disappointing.
OCR is the process of recognizing the text in the image created when a document is scanned and then converting it to text that can be edited in a word processing program.
Unfortunately many novices discover after purchasing their scanner it includes a lite version or in some cases an inappropriate legacy version of a popular OCR software program.
In either case, software that unless the scanned document is printed on quality preferably opaque paper with clearly defined standard fonts will produce a word processing document that requires more time to edit than it would have taken to type it directly into the word processor.
State of the art OCR software can cost from $150 to $600. My favorite has always been OmniPage from $150 to $500, but there are other excellent OCR programs e.g. Abby Fine Reader and Adobe Acrobat.
If you’re planning on scanning many documents of varied paper quality and font legibility with the intention of editing the scanned documents, best you consider a state of the art OCR program.
If not perhaps you should consider Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing for $19.95.
Speech recognition software has come a long way in the last few years. However like OCR software you’ll probably be disappointed if you do not consider a state of the art program,.
If you want an example of how difficult it is to recognize speech, read at your normal speed a paragraph or two into a tape or digital recorder. Play back your recording and listen carefully to your voice modulation and speech idiosyncrasies. I believe most will agree to accurately convert their recording to text would require sophisticated software.
And if you’re fellow Bostonian and have a tenancy to pronounce potato, podado and always pahk your cah in Hahvahd Yahd, you most definitely will need a sophisticate speech recognition program.
In my opinion, Nuances Dragon Naturally Speaking is the standard of the industry. It’s truly amazing and the Standard addition can be purchased for only $99.
I recommend the Standard addition as it is the least expensive way for you to determine the value of a speech recognition program. You can always upgrade to Dragon Preferred if you require additional features e.g., the ability to dictate into a handheld transcription device that’ll synch with your PC.
Here’s wishing you a Good boot.
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