Customer Reviews

OmniPage 17 [Old Version]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Just when you thought Scansoft could not make a product any more user-unfriendly: introducing Omnipage 17. This product is terrible. I still have not found a way to use it. I just want my money back. This is not from someone who has never used an Omnipage program before. I have owned both 12 and 14. Both were headaches (and the customer service is awful), but at least I could make sense of them after a while. But I am the idiot who thinks, "this time it will be different; this time they will get it right." All I want to do is one very simple thing: convert scanned pages into Word documents. Eventually (and after a lot of frustration) I will be able to figure this thing out as well, but for now, I make the same pledge I seem to make every few years to never buy another Nuance product again.
ADDED December 24: I finally got the program to work, but I could not remember how I did it. Certainly the "help" within the program was no help. It took me another thirty minutes (and a lot of frustration) to finally get it to work a second time--and I still don't remember quite what I did. I cannot adequately express the level of frustration I feel when trying to operate this program. I am sorry I purchased it.

UPDATE: It is now March, and I am still struggling with this software. After nearly four months, I am to the point of taking it off my computer and putting the old one back on. I can't say enough bad things about this product.

ONE LAST UPDATE: I did figure out how to use this program (on my own, of course), and I now use it frequently to good result. I am now glad that I own it; however, I will balance this by saying that the accuracy is not all that nuance makes it out to be. I am finding errors such as leaving both punctuation marks and small words like "I'll" out entirely. The program will also confuse an exclamation point (!) with a lower-case L (l) at times. These problems do not happen a lot, but I do find them I would estimate one or two every seven or eight pages, so careful proof-reading is necessary. I also check against originals to make sure that the source of the problem is not there, and it is not.

ONE LAST ONE LAST UPDATE: I'm done with 17. There are too many problems--problems with scanner and computers--I am back to OmniPage 14. It simply works better. Now I just have to remind myself to hang up the phone whenever some Nuance rep. calls with the "latest and greatest product" - there is no reason to believe it will work better than any of the others.

After reading the three previous pans of this product I have to put in a good word. I can't say how someone who has never used an OCR program will react to this product, but if you are a user of previous versions of OmniPage you will feel right at home. I have been using OmniPage since Version 6 or earlier. Sometimes I have felt a particular new version was a step back from the previous version, but that is not the case here. I have just upgraded from version 14 to 17 and it appears to be excellent. If you are doing an upgrade and can't remove the prior version, which is apparently a requiement, open up the folder where the old version is located and find the file named "remover.exe". This apparently gets rid of whatever is preventing the new software to load. Regarding some of the negative comments, once I understood how to uninstall the previous version (this took about 15 seconds and a system restart) the installation was painless and very quick. "Just When You Thought" said that the program was difficult to use, I just don't see it. Maybe its becasue I have used the other versions for so long, but Version 17 was a breeze. As for importing PDF pages I have had no problems.

I compared the OCR processing of a printed letter containing a logo using OmniPage17 and Acrobat 9 Professional. OmniPage required several prompts to correct suspects and handled the logo as text. Acrobat on the other hand processed the file seamlessly and correctly.

The good news is that the company stood by its 30-day money back guarantee.
My advice is to give it a try. If it works for you, fine. Otherwise you can be certain of getting a prompt refund.

As with so many others, you will quickly become very, very frustrated with any Nuance product, whether it's OmniPage, Dragon Naturally Speaking or their other products. Their technical and customer support is very poor, and you will be charged for everything. Most importantly, you should know they've set up an impossible "activation" system that is basically another income generator for them and a rip-off for the consumer. Every time you wish to install the software--as when your hard drive crashes or you buy a new computer--you must pay them $10 to get a new activation number. Behind glitzy marketing you will find a company that has few scruples and little interest in their customers (at least after you purchase their products). Their upgrades are ridiculous--you will be charged at least $100 for what are in essence minor updates to their software.

I also agree with the other reviewers that the positive reviews found here sound very suspiciously like Nuance "plants", which would not surprise me in the least about this unscrupulous company.

have been a satisfied user of Omnipage 16. I just bought Omnipage 17 as an upgrade.

1. Installation is horrific. You must uninstall Omnipage 16 manually until you can install Omnipage 17

2. Omnipage 17, unlike Omnipage 16, did not import PDF files properly. I've always imported several individual PDF drawing files created by CutePDF into a single file containing all the drawings using Omnipage 16. However Omnipage 17 messes up the most of the imported files by distorting the borders. What was one page are now 2 distorted pages.

My only workaround is to print each page separately, then scan in the printed pages into a sing document.

My OmniPage 17 will not work. It's been tried on two computers. Omnipage has been useless.

After three tech support sessions totaling nearly 2 hours with three "techs" who read off the same screens and told me to do the same things this product still does not work.

I am appalled at the dismal level of tech support.

This is positively the worst tech support experience that I have ever had. I've been in the technology business for 23 years and have served as the CEO of two companies. I would have been embarrassed to death if one of my customers had ever been as shoddily treated as I have.

I have HEARD good things about OmniPage 17, but right now I could not SAY anything truthful that would be good.

Nuance develops some excellent programs.
This is not one of them.
The most blatant problems are the lack of any support after the first few months, no supported forums, and finally and most importantly absolutely no compatibility with Microsoft Office 2010.

Omnipage 17 is without qualification the most unintuitive and unproductive program I have ever used. I suspect it must have been written by a team of lobotomized chimpanzees.
I upgraded from Omnipage 12 to utilize the OCR application when I began using Windows 7. You might think that after all these years Nuance would improve the product...to the contrary it is slower and less intuitive than ever.
Here are just a few of the problems:
--You must create a workflow to scan and perform OCR...
--The workflow creation process is cumbersome and forces you to create separate names for the workflow and the produced document;
--There is no simple way to set up default workflows with common elements...
--There is no intuitively simple way to simply scan a document and proof it...
--I run a 64 bit operating system with a blazing processor and huge memory but the scanning recognition is as slow as ever...over 90 seconds per page...
I could go on.

Omnipage 17 doesn't even rise to the "It Sucks" level...Save your money and take a speed typing class...

The OmniPage 17 software was everything I was expecting; however, if you are running on a Windows 7 OS, don't even think of purchasing it. You expect a one-time activation; this program wants to activate every time you reboot. Although I am on the same exact machine with the same exact hardware, it will show at least two different machine footprints, and wants to go through the activation process again and again each time I reboot. After 2 reinstallations and no resolution to the problem from techical support, I regretfully asked for a Return Merchandise Authorization and my money back. What a shame to have a really great software program that's bundled with an Activation feature that essentially disables the program!

The product never worked on my computer. I downloaded the producted from the Nuance website. It would not install. DigitalRiver, the company contracted to run the download for Nuance, referred me to Nuance. Nuance referred me to DigitalRiver. They stole $100 from me, plain and simple.