Hi Denise. I'm glad you have had the chance to play with a free program because it's shown you what's possible and what you need to work well. With your price range in mind, buying a used copy of FineReader from a place like EBay or Amazon Marketplace might fill the bill. You could also do a search to find good deals from Froogle. FineReader is the program most of us use for scanning. Kurzweil and Openbook are a sort of wrapper or front end for FineReader to make it read well. A brand new copy of FineReader 9 costs around $400. However, used versions of 7 or 8 are available for much less than that. Sometimes I see FineReader 7 or 8 being sold that has never been opened at all. FineReader 8 is what they used in the Bookshare office until last year, and it's the scanning engine in the latest versions of both Kurzweil and Openbook. So you wouldn't be resorting to something old that you'd need to hold together with chewing gum and duct tape. :-) I know several volunteers who are still scanning with FineReader 7, and their work is truly excellent. You couldn't tell which volunteer is using which version of FineReader except for possibly with math textbooks or art magazines. I hope this helps. You're a pretty resourceful woman, so I probably don't even need to say this next part. Just in case. If you're new to using EBay or Froogle for shopping, I will be happy to help you learn to use the sites. They are how many of us were able to afford our scanning technology. Most of us know well the need to be frugal, so you're in good company. :-) Monica Willyard "The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker _____ From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Denise Wagner Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 4:30 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Recommendations for OCR and Scan software Hi all, I've seen many software titles mentioned here in the discussion group and my head is spinning. I'm currently in a position where I must be frugal, so I downloaded a free program called FreeOCR to do some scanning and converting to get my feet wet. Where I was really enjoying the scanning and it was very easy, there were a few things missing from the software that I thought would make it easier. First, I could only scan one page at a time, convert it to OCR, then scan the next. The pages were not saved under the same document. I would have to scan and save each page and name them individually. This would be quite cumbersome and annoying. Second, I left my computer to come back in the afternoon, and all my work was gone. I'd love to be able to save as I go. Third, I was going to have to put the entire converted document into Word, then go back and put all the page breaks in after everything was done. So, free is nice, but my time is money. Can anyone recommend a good software that's relatively easy to use that has some good bells and whistles? I can't afford hundreds of dollars, but my budget will allow a little spending -- maybe less than one hundred? I am sighted, so I don't know if that makes a difference. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Denise