Let's remember to not confuse the special scanning applications developed by Kurzweil and Freedom Scientific (OpenBook) with the utilities that accompany most scanner peripherals these days. Kurzweil and OpenBook are designed to work specifically with blind users and are integrated with the on-board scanning peripheral(s) available on any given PC configuration. On the other hand, the software utilities that usually come with a newly purchased scanner are general user packages that may or may not work well with screen reading software. What I've discovered with my new Dell AIO 810 is that the included scanning utility software will allow much higher resolution (up to 2400 DPI if memory serves); the image is then translated into text via the on-board Optical Scanning Recognition (OCR) software I happen to have (which is ABBY on my system).
I find it much more convenient to use my Kurzweil software because it is designed to work effectively with screen reading software. I suspect that if I run into a particularly tough document to scan accurately I could (and have) resort to the accompanying utility that would allow me to up the scanning resolution dramatically. Ultimately though, it all falls to the OCR to convert the scanned image into a text based document. The utility that comes with my new Dell all-in-one scanner is somewhat clumsy for me to use with JAWS and I found the utility that came with my old HP PSC 1315 to be likewise clumsy to use as my main document scanning utility. But these components -- the scanning software utilities, the image scanner and the OCR all work together to yield what we need. ---*---*---*---*---*---*--- Holland's Person, Bill E-Mail: billgal...@centurytel.net - Anonymous (from my source of goofy stuff) - Eggs and Bacon for Breakfast - An entire day commitment for a chicken. - A Lifetime Commitment for a Pig For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
