The DextraReader is a potentially ideal solution to the low-end OCR market. OCR with a handscanner is for the terminally insane.
'can I afford a flatbed? Can I put up with a handheld?' problem. It's a lightweight desktop machine, about 12x6x3.5inches.
It uses a single sheet feed to pass the page through the scanner, doing away with the wobbly scans or inconsistent scanning speeds.
scan line art or 256-greyscales at up to 600dpi, handle a maximum page size of just over A4 size, and take ten seconds to scan each page.
The DextraReader comes with i-Photo (image-editing software), Type Reader (OCR) and Card Reader software. i-Photo isn't too bad as an image editor, but it's left in the shade easily by many similar packages bundled with scanners, like Picture Publisher Lite for example. It certainly can't compare with the real heavyweights like Adobe Photoshop 2.5 or Aldus PhotoStyler. That said, it's perfectly adequate for cleaning up scans, and adding the odd special effect here and there.
Type Reader, however, is a top-class package. It produced excellent OCR results when I ran a number of test files through it, with a very low error rate and an easy-to-use interface. It also treats the page in a different way to most OCR packages, allowing it to retain formatting from the original document. This can save a lot of time.
Slightly off the beaten track, Card Reader is a nifty, and pretty unusual, idea. It's simply for scanning in your business cards into a database, which you can then search through, organise and view the cards. Saves carting them around or losing them, but it's a shame that the DOS-based software is both quirky and very rudimentary. I'm not sure the end result is worth the effort.
If you are looking for a general purpose scanner, don't fancy fiddling about with a handheld, and want to be able to use OCR, then the DextraReader is worth keeping an eye on.
Here's is an affordable alternative to a handscanner, that not only handles images but is also practical for OCR'.
