Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
It's software, Nate. It's taking a scan and passing it directly to a PDF printer built into the software on your PC, sometimes via bundled OCR software. So yea, I'd be surprised as well if new printers are coming without it, because it is just software - and once you've built the software, the cost of bunding it with all your printers is marginal.
I bought a (£60 RRP, although I got it a lot cheaper) HP multifunction printer recently, and it's software can OCR-process a document and produce a "readable PDF" with OCR'ed text, or just process the text and produce rtf, txt or html.
It's not perfect by a long shot, but it is good at getting the text off letters and other printed text.
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Ah, but the difference is that the software is in the copier itself not in your computer. Take a look at ecopy (
http://www.ecopy.com), recently purchased by Nuance. You can use your copier to make eBooks in PDF that are searchable. No need for a computer. Some, like the canon, even have a USB master port on the copier and you can download directly from the copier to your eBook. This makes the office one step closer to paperless. And yes, some pretty cheap devices support this already.
Dale