Customer Reviews

PDF Converter Professional 5.0 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

Scansoft products used to be decent products with strong support. That was before Nuance bought them out. Since capturing a basic monopoly on Voice to text, Text to Voice, scan to text, and PDF conversion, the company has grown arrogant, and less customer oriented than Microsoft at their worst. As one reviewer wrote, they charge you for customer support. The process goes something like this.

You visit the web page, and if you product is the current generation, or one prior, (it doesn't matter, current gen get treated no better)you have to enter in your license/product code, enter in your credit card number, and agree to be charged $9.95 for a totally useless email experience that only allows you access to their support page when you get a reply. My most recent experience involves Omnipage Pro, which has PDF converter and Creator built in. Omnipage Pro is such a slow and practicality useless program, that I uninstalled it after a week. However, a need came up where I needed a PDF converter, so I thought I'd load that part of the software.

I ran set up, used custom, had PDF creator and Converter installed leaving out the scanner software, entered in my key code, started the program, was asked if I wanted to activate the software, I did, however it wouldn't let me, telling me the license code was not valid. I attempted to find the problem/solution in their knowledge base, but don't bother, there is little if anything in there other than contact technical support.

So off to techincal support I went, only to discover that even for an installation problem, I had to pay. I did, after two days I got a response, telling me they needed my license code. As I'd had to enter it to get to the support page, this was irritating but I went to the webpage since they do no allow you to just hit respond. Entered in the key and two days later got another message telling me that my key code was for Omnipage Pro, not PDF converter. Gee, thanks for telling me that since I had to go to the Omnipage section to begin my initial inquiry.

I tried rewording my request, stating I have OmniPage pro, with comes with PDF creater and PDF Converter, and only wanted Converter to install, however it rejects my key code. Another two days pass, I get an emailed response telling me I don't have the proper code for PDF converter, mine is for Omnipage Pro. Again, I was grateful for the insight.

Back to the website, asked if there was anyway I could just install the portion of Omnipage that had the separate PDF. After more than a week passed, I get an email, telling me that I must install the entire program, register it, activate it, than I can uninstall the Omnipage pro leaving the PDF converter.

Following the instruction, I load the entire program, activate it, test PDF converter which works, go to add and remove, PDF creater and converter are listed separate from Omnipage,so I uninstall it per the directions of the last email. I go to use the PDF converter, it asks me if I want to activate it, (which I'd already done, but what the heck)it asks me for my key code, which I enter, only to get back a reply the key code I've entered is not valid.

Back to the website, explain the problem, and surprise, the response after two days is "your key code is not valid for PDF converter, only for Omnipage".

I give up, decide I'll just load the entire program and live with Omnipage taking up room. I install the entire program, enter the key code, asked to activate, which I do, only to get a message the key code is not valid as I've already installed Omnipage previously. Back to the webpage. set out the problem. A week goes by, I get a response asking me for the key code, and a screen shot, and a copy of the receipt. I supplied all, and am still waiting for a response.

My advice, stay away from all nuance programs. I've spent close to two hundred dollars for a Pro version of a product, received no free customer support, and after wasting more than two weeks, still have no product to run.

Nuance PDF Converter Professional 4 had some really bad reviews, which
made me somewhat nervous when purchasing version 5. However when
comparing PDF Converter to Acrobat, the price of $[...] was too juicy to
resist.
Furthermore, the early reviews of this version suggested Nuance had
released an improved product. I also expected that after 5 versions the
software would be well tested.

I wish I had waited another month before buying as I certainly would
have looked for another alternative.

The software runs crashes Firefox when opening a PDF, it also takes a
long time to load up and then runs at snails pace when trying to edit a
document.

I have just WASTED $[...]!

... and Nuance must must be kidding you have to PAY MONEY TO REPORT A
PROBLEM WITH THEIR PRODUCT???? I really must consider this 'scam' when
dealing with my clients.

This product is obviously intended to compete with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional, which has serious flaws. Having tired of Adobe's vaporware, I went to Nuance's website and downloaded this version of PDF Professional 5.0, only to find that it lacks support for scanners. (This is strange because Nuance's flagship product, Omnipage, does include support for scanners.) You can work around this problem by using the scanner program that comes with Windows, saving the file as a TIF file and then loading it into PDF Converter, but that's a pain.

PDF Converter also appears not to be able to insert headers and footers (despite Nuance's claim to the contrary in its early promotional materials) and its compression capability is lame.

It does, however, include features for inserting, extracting, replacing, deleting, cropping and rotating pages, which I had been having trouble with in Adobe. It also carries over hyperlinks from original documents (see Comments, below).

All in all, probably worth purchasing, but you're likely to purchase Acrobat when, or if, Adobe gets its act together.

UPDATE (08/06/08): I have used Acrobate 9, which just came out, for several days. The problems that I encountered with Acrobat 8 all appear to have been corrected.

We bought this product to convert legal documents. It will convert them but you lose all formatting including line numbering and strikethroughs. This made the converted documents completely useless. The program takes over your computer, freezes Internet Explorer and continually overrides Acrobat as the default reader. Customer service at Nuance is beyond awful. I was expected to pay to have them fix problems that are inherent to the program. I will never buy another Nuance product.

I bought this software because the price was reduced to an affordable level. After installation, it failed to recognize my printer on several jobs and took forever with some pdf conversions. When I uninstalled it, it altered my printer drivers, which all had to be re-installed. I'm going back to Adobe software. Their online pdf converter is free and the pdf software, though pricvey, actually does work.

This product would not work properly in a fully updated Windows XP Professional system and fully updated Internet Explorer 6.X.

It would open *.PDF files that had been saved to my hard drive but would not open *.PDF files that were accessed through links from Outlook Express. It would open some internet resident files that were accessed directly from Internet Explorer.

Both Adobe Reader 8.X and 9.X had no problem opening the same *.PDF files.

Great perseverance was required to return this product to its manufacturer, Nuance, without paying return postage.

Word documents cannot be opened after installing this product. No response from Nuance after reporting this problem and requesting advice. Regret having purchased this product.

There is no magic button for converting PDF files that are easy to edit. This software totally messed up my computer and took many features over. Spent countless hours trying to get it to work. Gave up. "Manual" leaves a lot to be desired. Even though Amazon's price is far superior to the manufacturers price and attitude, this software is not worth any amount of money. It simply does not work.

I have bought a few Nuance products now. This is the last.

Sadly, for a company that used to be poor at marketing but still released good software, the opposite is now true. It appears that they no longer spend money on product development or support, but spend lots on having a nice box. The marketing and packaging for this product promise the world, but deliver only heartache. This is compounded by the obvious outsourcing of support, which you have to pay for.

From the get-go, this program crashed (in PdfCreateHook) on my Vista machine. Updating to the latest patch did not resolve the problem. Without this portion of the software working, it reverts to demo mode, putting watermarks over everything. No help from Nuance, either.

After reading the other reviews, I was no longer surprised, and was able to successfully return the opened packed to the retailer from whom I purchased it (kudos to them!) for a full refund. I plan to avoid all Nuance software in the future.

To all Retailers: Stop carrying software that doesn't work! Retailers pull a lot of weight--if you stopped carrying crappy software these guys would either wake up and fix things, or go out of business--either would be good for you and your customers.