I have been using Finereader since its version 3.0 at about the time
I lost my sight. The interface has changed several times over the
years. FR has always been accessible and usable by the blind, much
more so than, say, Omnipgage. Over here in Europe, it is _the_ocr
program used by the blind and, when the client is eligible, often
included in a reading solution package financed by the health
insurance or other organization.
I have only had a go at a demo of FR 11 as we usually get FR at a
much reduced price when the next version is released. however, FR 11
is certainly usable and its recognition is, as always, very very good.
FR's interface underwent a major change between its version 8 and 9.
It is still accessible and still usable but just quite different.
Whether you will be comfortable with it or not, depends largely on
how you use FR and what you do or do not consider accessible and what
your needs are. FR's reconition has always been amazingly
accurate and it has recongized just about anything I've slapped on
my scanner including poor quality print paperbooks yellow with age,
typewriter pages or even mimeographed publications of a few decades
ago. FR never failed me and never took even a fraction of the time I
spent with some ocr packages specifically for the blind that I worked
with. When the fine engine of a particular FR version was used with
OB or K1K, I always found without fail that recognition in FR itself
with the same version of its fine engine was better and much more painless.
The setup I have yere is that I scan my books and everyday
correspondence, forms, or documents my husband and I need electronic
copies of wiht FR 7, which I still prefer for its interface and ease
of use (due to my being very very familiar with it and my preference
for working in FR's internal editor.) If I need to recognize a pdf
document, maybe even a bilingual one, or a poor quality document, i
use FR 10 on it because its reconition accuracy has improved
dramatically since its version 7 or 8. Even on some of the bilingual
texts that I ran thru fr 10, the accuracy was amazing even though I
had just hset it to automatic language reconition.
If you are a longtime user of Finerader, you know that you can
download a free demo copy of it from Abbyy's homepage. I would
defiinitley advise you to do this. Also, you can keep your trusted
old FR 8 on the same system as they install to different folders.
You just need to keep the batches each saves separately as FR's
batches are not backward compatible.
Finally, depending on what country you live in, you might be able to
get the previous version of FR at a much much reduced price. I do not
quite remember the price of the latest version of FR at the time. I
think it may be around 200 Euros, which is roughly about US$300. The
previous version may be availablefor as little as 1/4 of the price of
the current version or even a little less. Unless you specifically
need a feature that comes with the latest version, you are probalby
going to be just fine with the previous one, especially in light of
the fact that the latest version of k1k or ob usually use the fine
engine of the previous version of the current retail version of fr itself.
I hope this was a little helpful and that you will find the version
of FR that works best for you and is the right size for your wallet.
And if FR 8 does all you need it to do - and it might well do that -
just remember "if it ain't broke ..." *g*
hth
Doris
At 10:30 AM 11/23/2011 +0200, you wrote:
Hello List
Does anyone know if the latest version of FineReader is as
accessible with jaws13 and windows 7 as FineReader 8?
Regards
Fanus
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