System requirements: Windows 95, 98 ,2000, NT 4.0. It will run on a 486 based Intel PC with 16 MB RAM and 55 MB free disk space; however, a Pentium based PC with 32 MB RAM is recommended. The program comes on one cd plus a tutorial cd. ReadIris Pro 7 has been released and the cost is around $100.

Readiris is an OCR text recognition program. It converts documents containing text only, text and graphics, multi-column formats, faxes, etc. into editable text. I found it surprisingly accurate and within a short time, fairly simple to use.

Although, there were some manual steps involved, the program installed easily; however, I could not locate my scanner in their scanner list. As I was also having a problem scanning (none of the characters were recognizable), I called their tech support line. I left a message and received a call back in about ten minutes. I explained my problem and also the fact that I did not have much experience scanning. He told me to use a twain scanner type and to make sure the document was not upside down during character recognition. He also said that changing to grayscale might help. The problem was solved - although I'm not sure which of the suggestions did it. I found him to be courteous and very knowledgeable.

I am making a yearbook for another club that I belong to. I scanned many of the old pages to use as a template for the new book. I found the program very accurate. It also kept the format quite well. There were some manipulations that had to be made, but it was much faster than retyping.

Both images and documents can be brought into the program in a number of ways. By using the source button, you can select either the scanner or a file location. You can also drag and drop images onto the Readiris image zone. Finally, you can open images from within Windows explorer by right-clicking an image file and selecting the recognize command from the context menu. Readiris supports many image formats such as jpeg. pcx, dx, tiff and bmp.

The learn feature actually enables Readiris to get smarter with use. The recognize button starts the ocr process, after which the interactive learning phase is entered. Recognized text is displayed and the system stops on doubtful characters or doubtful character strings. The user then has the option of having the program learn these characters for future use, or if it is just a case of "dirty" or poorly formed characters, selecting the don't learn option. By the use of different font dictionaries, depending upon the application, changes can be saved to the appropriate one.

There is also an option to recreate the page layout or just scan the text without any formatting. Another feature of the program is the ability to select certain images or text to be recognized and saved. Other features are the deskewing option to straighten pages, and the despeckle option to eliminate stray spots and "dirt".

Although I am a novice at scanning, I was able to scan and edit all the documents that I needed. I was also able to separate the text from the graphics. There are tutorials and prescanned images to guide the user through various scenarios; from simple text-to-text and graphic combinations, to poor quality documents. The instructions are detailed and lead the user step-by-step through the process. I would highly recommend this program.