Pagis Pro 3.0 comes with Pagis Pro installation program and application software, TextBridge Pro OCR software, on-line manuals for Pagis Pro and TextBridge Pro in Adobe PDF format, Adobe Acrobat Reader, sample XIF image files, Pagis MiniViewer and Pagis Pro Release Notes. The suite includes full versions of Kai's ^TM PhotoSoap 2, Copier and Forms Fill-In. For the purposes of this review I will be concentrating on the scanning, OCR and Forms Fill-In portions of the suite and will go into greater detail of the PhotoSoap and Copier portions at another time, as I have not explored those functions as yet.

Installation was on a 300 MHz Celeron 32 bit system with 64 MB RAM, 16 bit color, 800x600 resolution and a Visioneer OneTouch 7600 flat bed scanner. The installation took approximately 30 minutes from the time of insertion of the installation CD and the final restart of the system, using the typical install option. PhotoSoap was not installed at this time. The installation took up approximately 110 MB of disk space and at this time, about 2 weeks after the installation, caused no conflicts with other programs or devices.

The first thing that I explored after installation was the Pagis Inbox, which is basically a very enhanced Windows folder, one of the most helpful enhancements being thumbnail representations of the images. In addition to the regular Windows menus and commands, the Pagis Inbox also includes the Pagis toolbar, where you can perform all your scanning functions; the Pagis SendTo Bar, which contains icons of the applications on your computer that you might wish to have your scanned image sent for further processing (these would be applications such as: your e-mail, word processor, web publisher, etc.); and Pagis folders, which are subfolders for you images if you want to keep them all in one place or group together everything pertaining to one project. A nifty feature I like, is the ability to add a title, the author and or keywords to your scan to make it easier to find in the future; this really works well with the Database Monitor feature, which is also included (I haven't used it a real lot as yet but if you are short on disk space, this feature might be a problem as it collects and stores information on an abundance of scans).

By using the Scan icon on the Pagis Tool Bar, you can gain more control over how the item in question is scanned than with the minimum usually received with your scanner. The preset for 'Any Document' analyzes the scanned image to determine the correct settings. The presets for 'Magazine Article', 'Letter', 'Form', 'Photograph' and 'Business Card' provide the appropriate settings necessary to produce the optimum image for their appropriate functions, while the 'Custom Setting' lets you enter your own settings for whatever special scan set up you might need. You can also copy, in color, or even fax right from the Pagis Tool Bar, with such helpful functions as the ability to reduce to fit, collating your copies, auto straightening the page, removing stray dots or lines, and more. I have found that I have to do a lot less clean up on my scans by using these features than I did with the software that came with my scanner at time of purchase.

I did a couple of OCR scans for no other purpose than to test the program's capabilities. I did not find any errors, but then again, I did not use something very complicated. I was impressed at how accurately the OCR function performed, but I do not have much use for it at this time.

All in all, the Pagis Pro scanning software has made my scanning easier and better. Once I have had a chance to experiment with the PhotoSoap software, I will follow up with a review in a future newsletter.