Customer Reviews

ScanSoft OmniPage 15 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I have just purchased this upgrade, so the following comments should be viewed as preliminary. Still, some information is better than none.

Having used OmniPage since its beginning, I have been irritated by the company's practice of releasing software before it has driven the bugs out. That does not appear to be a problem in this case. The software loaded cleanly and came up and works properly.

As one would expect after 15 shots at it, character recognition is generally excellent.

The big advance is in speed of operation. Compared to ver. 14, this version flies, which will probably be the improvement of greatest interest to users.

The interface remains non-user-friendly. New users will go crazy trying to figure out how to use it, but once you do, it's worth it.

I purchased this product two weeks ago to convert some PDF files to searchable format. When I could get the OCR to start it did a good job of converting the text. The interface was difficult to use, and in about 20% of the runs the application would hang before beginning the conversion. When I attempted to use set up batch scans the system crashed while I was configuring it in 100% of the runs.

I would have reported the problem to technical support, but the publisher charges per incident. To be fair they do offer to wave the charge for the first incident, but since the program crashed in the first five minutes of use it seemed like I would be contacting support more than once. I finally took advantage of the 30-day money back guarantee (I'd highly recommend checking that this applies if you're thinking about buying the program) and purchased Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 instead.

As a computer scientist of 15+ years, I've seen my share of buggy code, frustrating application GUIs and useless technical support. But I must say that Scansoft's Omnipage far exceeds even the worst apps I've ever used (and I have used a lot). I'm able to crash the application in several ways- all repeatable. Some of the problems are more random but they all involve crashes or hangs that end up loosing whatever you were working on. I've submitted several of these bugs to their technical support- for which I have the pleasure of paying them $19.95 "per incident". Most of their responses involve "it works for me" or some type of unacceptable work around which no human being should ever have to subject themselves. They have yet to address the problem head on.

It's amazing to me that such a bad product has a significant market share - is this market too small to attract more competitors? It certainly doesn't seem like it would be very hard to provide a better product than this.

The only free support they use to provide was a message board where customers could post problems and try to help each other. They now no longer let anyone register to post on these boards- probably because everyone was writing about how bad the product and company support are...

I highly recommend you try any other package than this before going with Omnipage. This should only be a last resort- and then you must prepare yourself for the frustration, anger and disappointment.

BTW- If you must use this product, avoid the "proof reader" tool at all costs. Many of the crashes and problems come from this tool (but not all).

Good luck.
Bryan Michael

If you don't have a scanner that is on the list of scanners "supported" by Nuance, you probably should avoid this one like the plague. My HP 3970 is only a year old, yet Omnipage 15 is not fully functional with the HP driver. When I checked the list, it was not on it. Do you suppose they might have made compatibility issues more explicit in their promotion? I have to scan pages of a multi-page document one at a time because the "Add more pages" button, after the first scan, does not contact the scanner; it only adds one more image of the previous page. After a number of days of e-mail and phone calls to both HP and "Nuance" (which must mean "you're screwed", but subtly), the conclusion is that I cannot use this software to its full capacity unless I invest a considerable chunk of cash in a new scanner. Unfortunately, I waited for 3 months before installing the program (I must have had an intuition about the troubles I'd encounter), so I can't return it for a refund. To summarize: Nuance says get a better driver and HP says it doesn't have one. Forget it!

I bought OmniPage 15 yesterday morning as a download, and have been trying to activate it ever since. After several calls to customer service, forty minutes on hold to speak with a tech rep (who emailed me two links that don't open), I'm no closer to being able to use this program. It seemed to work okay in the few intro uses allowed before you had to activate to continue, but even then it kept wanting to reload with every page I scanned in.

The product might be a good one--I'm not a fair judge of that--if only you can get it to work. As others have pointed out, tech support is expensive. If my experience is any measure, it's also worthless.

Customer service is unresponsive, unpleasant, and unprofessional. In one call to Customer Service, I was asked if I typed the letters in the serial number as capitals and the O's as zeroes. When assured that I had, several times, she replied, "Then I can't help you--call the tech department," and abruptly hung up. To add irritation to insult, in the forty minutes I was on hold with the tech department, I listened to repeated assurances that a "reepersentative" would be with me shortly.

Not recommended.

Omnipage is a buggy piece of software which is prone to throwing errors and mysterious crashes (often occuring at the end of a lengthy process). Nuance provides no support and when you attempt to contact them they want $9.95 for an email question or $19.95 for a phone question. You might expect this from an inexpensive piece of software but for the cost of Omnipage you would expect some support. I recommend finding something more reliable from a company that provides some measure of support.

At the price I was expecting more of a Cadillac, but the interface is a bit sparse and functional. (No power leather seats here). The help is limited. The 94 page manual is on CD - better have a color laser handy. Some features are only part of the much more expensive 'Professional' series (no scanner TWAIN drivers included).

That said, it has lots of features and power. It seems especially adapted to automatic and batch modes. It's not for the casual user or beginner. Those that have LOTS of documents to convert will get use to it and like it.

The previous version (Ominpage 14) sell for much less. I recommend you start with that. Nothing in the latest version (15) seems to command such a price.

The product performs inconsistently. It failed miserably when it tried OCR on a page printed in comic sans, for instance, mistaking a's for g's, and @'s for a's, etc. In short it was worthless for scanning in something as simple as a list of names and email addresses.

It's "OK" when doing some fonts. And generally manages to figure out where the images are. The interface is supposed to be simple, but is counter-intuitive, and confusing to learn.

Scanners are "iffy" -- may work, may not, so make sure you test in the 30 day trial period.

Support? Forget unless you want to pay. Not even a single support call is included in the package.

I will NOT buy or upgrade with this company again unless they are willing to provide at least a minimum of a couple of support calls or emails.

I've had almost all the versions before this, and to be honest like this one less than what was before.

If you want to try it, buy from a source that will honor the 30-day money-back trial period. You may need it.

The real headache began when I attempted to "activate" the program. I spent hours trying to activate it, to no avail. I got messages saying that the serial number was invalid and a host of other problems. Now, I would just like to get my money back. I have used ScanSoft's stuff in the past and have been pleased with it, but, for whatever reason, OmniPage 15 has become, for me, an expensive nightmare. After having spent many hours trying to activate it, I still have not succeeded. Their support leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, they keep "bankers hours" so don't expect to get any help on the weekend or after hours.

I bought 15 licenses of this product for my real estate appraisal business. We looked at several OCR products including ABBYY's product. When we tested them together side by side, nine times out of ten, OmniPage produced a better and much cleaner document. I am always skeptical of new software products until they have been beaten to death and proven in the marketplace. During my product research I found this product consistently ranked at the top of the OCR heap. After using it I believe the hype - it's OCR is incredible.