Best OCR software

[BladePilot]

Thinking about changing my OCR Software I currently use an old TextBridge tool I got as a freebie with a very old Xerox printer all in one which bought the farm a long time back, the OCR software is pretty good but I'm sure it could be better. I want to OCR and save directly into Word. The OCR that came with my HP all in one is total Poo! It won't save to anything other than notepad and then I need to import the doc into Word needless to say I don't use it. Indeed I'm also thinking of dumping the HP all in one for another printer because I'm fed up with the software either always crashing or telling me it needs to check for updates every millisecond (well maybe every now and then but it seems like every millisecond!) I'm very dissapointed with it.
All good advice and reliable recommends gratefully accepted.



PS. needs to be Vista complient.

[Saab Dastard]

I can't call it the best, as I have no basis for comparison, but I've been using OmniPage for several years and have been reasonably satisfied.

The Pro version is very expensive though.

SD

[P.Pilcher]

Although, I appreciate that this will be of litle help, a number of years ago I acquired an Epson A4 scanner which has the necessary backlighting facilities for photographic negatives and slides built in. In its software pack was an OCR unit with which I have absolutely no complaint whatsoever, being able to tackle all fonts from an old manual typewriter (with dodgey ribbon and typeface) upwards.

P.P.

[extreme P]

ABBYY - OCR, ICR, OMR, Data Capture and Linguistic Software

I have no complaints with this.

[srobarts]

It depends what you are wanting to convert, OmniPage is good at detecting formatting as well as text so tables and columns are normally preserved but it may be overkill for some users.
I use the OCR in PaperPort which I use to organise my scanned documents. The OCR works well even with some quite iffy originals.