September 15, 1997

OCR Performance Set For Boost Caere and ScanSoft products offer major improvements in character-scanning accuracy By Karen M. Carrillo ptical character recognition software is about to take a leap in performance, if vendors' recent claims are any indication. Caere Corp. and ScanSoft Inc. are going head-to-head as both companies release the latest versions of their OCR software products. This week, Caere plans to unveil OmniPage Pro 8.0 and with it a new engine that, according to the company, improves character-recognition accuracy by 62% over version 7.0, which debuted in April 1996. ScanSoft, a subsidiary of Xerox, announced last week the newest version of its OCR software, TextBridge Pro 98, which it claims improves accuracy over its previous version by 35% to 45%. Both companies say their improved performance is related to neural network technology they've added to their products. In TextBridge Pro 98, the new technology is used, for example, to help distinguish between letters C and G. In OmniPage, it's also used to interpret non-English languages. Analysts say accuracy is key in OCR software. "For users to have faith, they have to be correct so they don't have to re-key-in documents," says Ron Tussy, an analyst at consulting firm International Data Corp. who follows the scanner market. Other enhancements to OmniPage are tighter integration with Microsoft Word and a multithreading feature that lets users scan, recognize, and edit pages simultaneously on a multiple-page document. "Users can start correcting errors while waiting for the recognition process to be completed on other pages," says Chad Kinzelberg, VP of marketing at Caere, in Los Gat os, Calif. "The more documents you [process with] OCR, the bigger the productivity gains." TextBridge Pro 98 features Office compatibility and improved document reformatting of Microsoft Word 97, Excel 97, and Corel WordPerfect 8.0 files. In addition, a new user interface has been incorporated. "It's real intuitive for first-time users," says Steve Ricketts, director of marketing software products for ScanSoft, in Peabody, Mass. Test customers of both vendors seem pleased with the improvements. "In the latest version, the character recognition is fantastic; it's 100% better than the last version," says OmniPage Pro user Jayme Bruno, a technical writer for Lam Research Corp. in Fremont, Calif. Lam uses OmniPage for making electronic versions of technical manuals. TextBridge Pro user Ernest Cuaron, president of Cure Inc., a health and life insurance broker in Albuquerque, N.M., uses the software system to scan policies and other legal documentation, and is particularly impressed with the improved M icrosoft integration. TextBridge Pro 98 is available for both Windows 95 and NT for $79. OmniPage Pro 8.0 is also available on Windows 95 and NT at $499; an upgrade price of $129 is being offered to any OCR software owners, including those that have OCR software bundled with scanners. Back to News in Review Send Us Your Feedback Top of the Page

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