As anyone that’s in document imaging should know v14 of PaperPort has been released; conveniently skipping version 13 [superstitiously]. I
f you don’t know what PaperPort is, it’s the best document and image organizer in the consumer market right now. There are a few applications that make an attempt complete with it, but for the direct consumer market; nothing compares to the ease of use it offers.
Recently, I was critical of PaperPort because I felt it was missing some points with customers and missing the interoperability to the web that I believe that it should have. I felt the overall evolution of PaperPort was really required and the function of the application really needed to be increased.
I’ve been attempting to ensure I do a techie review of PaperPort with each new major release to the public. And my version of a ‘techie review’ is a overall evaluation of the application, how it works and if the application is something you’d be willing to buy for your home or office. I like to dig into all the major features and options that are offered by the application and give my overall opinion of everything that’s offered.
The Installation of PaperPort 14
In doing my review for Nuance’s PaperPort v14, I downloaded a version to my local system; the download was about 600+ mb in size and took me about 5 minutes to download. I have to admit that right now I’m more drawn to purchasing software online and downloading it, as opposed to have to order and getting hard copies. Most machines now include the ability to burn your own CD/DVD’s. It’d take me 5 minutes to get my cars keys, get in the car and get out my driveway… so, downloading an electronic version works very well for me.
When the files were decompressed, the installation size is around a 1Gb.
It installed all the Microsoft builds for Microsoft visual C++ from 2005 -2010 and that also included .net framework 4. From there you go in to registration, but you don’t activate the application to the local PC.
There’s a license agreement after this and then the application starts installing.
I noticed this; it’s something I haven’t noticed before if it was in previous versions. And I couldn’t really find where it came in to play once the installation was completed. I really expected to see right-click context menus from Windows explorer.
Maybe v14 of PaperPort seems to be attempting to achieve a closer integration with the user, to be more accessible and more usable in a more innate environment. I may need to play with it some more to find the specific launch or interface points.
The installation of PaperPort v14 ended without incident. The installation as a whole was about 5 minutes…
PaperPort v14 comes with their Nuance PDF Viewer… I already had v7 [enterprise version], so, the installer asked if I wanted to upgrade; so, I did and this completed my installation of PaperPort.
PaperPort also requires you to activate your copy in order to use it on a permanent basis. This follows suit with some of the other applications Nuance has been releasing lately. They give you five uses before the application is shut down. Where you can’t get in to it… This happened to me when I was doing the review on PaperPort 12.
So, after about 5+ minutes of installations and activating PaperPort was ready to use it now. You can use PaperPort 5 times without registering it, but after that, you locked out.
Good review and I look forward to others. Users must self-support Nuance products as their customer service is legendarily horrible.
Agree with support problems. You get 90 days free on your dime and last time I called it was India. Tech was nice but not knowledgable. Tech is almost inevitable.
Wow, thanks for the thoughtful review.
Thanks for your comments…
I appreciate it…
Until next time,
Larry Henry J
On the basis of Larry Henry's review I would buy Paperport 14, he makes it sound good. And it may well be, but that has not been my experience on earlier releases. After being badly bitten by this product line I am going to need a lot more persuading. Since version 9 I have found Paperport to be badly behaved beyond belief. I currently have version 12 which refuses to run at all on my Vista 64 bit PC. The program is always stopped by Microsoft Data Execution Prevention, sometimes only moments after loading. I persevered with it for longer than I should have simply because I could not believe that a mainstream software company would market a product which simply didn't work. Numerous exchanges of emails with Nuance tech support shed no light on the problem and eventually I had to give up on Paperport and ditch it.
My advice to you; you can download the PaperPort version and test it for yourself. If you don't like it, call them back and ask for a refund. I believe you have 14 days to make that decision.
I'm not discounting your opinion, and PaperPort had it's issues, and their support has issues. But it's much easier to download it, try it and then get a refund if it's not your liking.
Thanks for your comments…
Until next time,
Larry Henry Jr.
My recent post Going Head-to-head: Windows 8 vs iOS and Android
PP 14 uses too many "other party" software components which leads to poor perfornance and downright incompetent functionality. The "verity' search function refuses to work on my blackbox, no matter what the tech help at Nuance (ScanSoft for profit only) provides. Nuance really needs to focus on single user issues, and not just corporate deployment. They would learn more about the foibles of their software, if they focused on single users!
I enjoyed the review, but I would love to hear a review after using Paperport 14 for a couple of months. I have ScanSoft Paperport 9 (both the individual and pro versions on two different computers) and aside from a few occasional lockups with the individual version, they are both solid performers. I do lots of scanning of music into my computer (I'm a choir director and composer) and I really rely on Paperport. But after reading so many review horror stories about versions of the software after 9, I am really hesitant to upgrade to 14. I also am very wary of upgrading due to the customer-no-service stories I've heard about Nuance. If they are not going to stand behind their products, why spend your hard earned money on their products. To bad they have such a bad rep because they pretty much have the market on this type of software. With some good customer service and solid software upgrade, I would think they just about everyone would be wanting to buy this product!
You know, I have heard the stories of the Nuance support and while I have not been on the PaperPort support line; I've been on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking support line. It's not funny…
And to be honest with you, PaperPort 12 I didn't buy. I did reviews on it, but I didn't buy it, nor did I keep it installed. PaperPort 12 had some issues and I noted those to Nuance when I turned in my review.
For me, personally, PaperPort works for me. The interface just seems logical to me… and while I've been critical of PaperPort in the past [and for reason] in PaperPort 14 the direction seem clear. They're focusing on business customers and people who are highly organized.
Nuance is leveraging their PaperPort product with their new PDF viewer/editor and if you really want to ramp it up; join PaperPort with OmniPage 18 with the OCR functions it has and you are really going to have something… It's like Voltron— separately, it's nice, together it's like MUCH better.
I hear your concern… I'll make an attempt do a follow-up blog on the use of it; in more detail.
Thanks for your comments…
Until next time,
Larry Henry Jr.
My recent post Going Head-to-head: Windows 8 vs iOS and Android
Hello Larry Henry
I am trying to get my head round the difference between OmniPage and PaperPort, since I am considering buying one or both (or neither, of course!). Basically, mine is a conceptual output (slogans, straplines, jingles, etc) in two major world languages and must be produced after reading printed (not online) material in the said languages. Some of that reading I need to scan and index for citation purposes. Would you advise PaperPort 14 or the current OmniPage (I think v. 18)?
OmniPage is OCR; page text recognition=E2=80=A6 that's all it really do= es. PaperPort on the other hand works as an organizer of information and has some OCR abilities. It also offers the abilities to scan pages and OCR them to a searchable PDF. Where OmniPage can scan a page, pull out data and export it to something like a csv file; PaperPort can't. PaperPort offers textbridge as OCR and it does very well; some will argue there's better and they are right to argue it.=C2=A0 PaperPort is about $200 and OmniPage is more=E2=80=A6 If all you are pu= tting efforts into doing is scanning and stripping out lines of text, and organizing them, PaperPort should be fine for you.<p ws=3D”true” style=3D”margin:0; “>Larry Henry Jr. <p ws=3D”true” style=3D”margin:0; “>LEHSYS.com=
The paperport Paperport flyer claims a 62% reduction in file size for color scans. I would think that this would be an easy bench test to perform and report on.
Considering that PaperPort isn't using the MAX files anymore, and they're aggressively pushing the PDF format; this is easy to deduce. The post mentions the conversion program and how they're killing the MAX format [finally]. There's your 62%…
Thanks for your comments…
Until next time,
Larry Henry Jr.
Where do you get the CVMAXPDF.EXE file? I like most PP users tried to upgrade from v7/8/9 but found v10/11/12 to be unuseable that I've gone back to v7. will this CVMAXPDF.EXE convert my v7 .max files?
The conversion program comes with v12 of PaperPort.
And you know— you have a very good point. I need to do some more exploring on the conversion program. I mentioned it, but I didn\’t go digging, but I still have a few MAX files to play with; I\’ll work on that… do some testing. Thanks!
Later,
Larry
I've noticed very poor quality icons on the top of paperport 14 on my 24'' monitor desktop pc, did you notice that too? The pp support asked me lots of questions about resolution, cable connection and graphic processor, etc. but PP14 is the only program that has such poor programmed icons on the desktop. If i compare that whit my 27'' mac at home it looks like prehistorical pc programming.Thanks for answering.
Danielebc
I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary… thanks for bringing it up. I'll check in to it.
Thanks for your comments…
Later,
Larry
I have been a PowerPoint Customer since the very beginning. Saying that, I have been bothered with how NUANCE has treated the customer Base. There is always "Don" to shill got them, and even he can't make their products work from Version 10 on.
I am a software Hardware integrator, and have done regression testing of software on hardware since the mid 1970s. It seems that since NUANCE bought the PaperPort Software from Scansoft-Xerox, the products do not work as advertised, and NUANCE does not support their customers.
I was hoping that Version 14 Pro would correct the stuttering operation of 12.1 Pro, but it seems, from the reviews, that this is not the case.
What is that old saw??? If you keep repeating a task and end up with the same result over and over, while expecting something different, it's known as insanity. Well, I think that buying a new iteration of PaperPort from NUANCE is, just that, insanity.
I upgraded to paperport 12 professional last year and had a few issues which were mainly sorted out with the eventual help of Nuance support. However there were still a few issues so when paperport 14 professional came along; although I had some reservations I decided to upgrade on the basis that hopefully some of the issues would have been sorted. Currently | am now unable to scan properly, paperport communicates with the scanner, then does not translate to a PDF file and will freeze. I have been in touch with Nuance every day over the last several days, one time being on the phone for nearly 1 hour with no reply. I uninstalled, reinstalled disabled programs, numerous restarts, you only seem to get one liners from Nuance support, have you tried this, have you tried that and then they start from the beginning again. I have now requested a remote access support from Nuance, just had a reply, they have given me a date 3 days from now. I am a business, I usually get same day remote access support. This is not what I would expect from a large company such as Nuance. When its working the software is great, that's why I've stuck with it, but if someone can suggest an alternative I will be considering this.
Buyer Beware PaperPort 14 is Garbage it continually stalls and crashes. The support is nonexistent I have been a customer of paperport since version 4 and they have gotten better and better leading up to version 9, after that the program has gotten worse with each release. Nuanmce is only about making money and dam the buyer.
I have not had that experience with it… But I understand that people do have issues. I do agree that customer support should be better.
Later,
Larry
Is the double-sided scanning bug that eats pages fixed?
I do not see where other of the formerly problematic functions (deskew would also ruin pages) were verified.
Nuance called innumerable times offering to sell a new version of Paperport even when I kept asking to stop the sales calls, but supplied not one update to such critical errors. A computer application should never destroy its customers’ data and the top priority should be to fix it.
Can I activate my PP14 on more than a single computer on my home network? Previously I could install on 1 desktop and 1 laptop, but need to verify before I install it. Thanks.
According to the license, you only purchase 1 license; so, technically you shouldn't be loading PaperPort on other machines. That's a violation of T&C's, but people do it. PaperPort has an activation and if you don't activate, after a few runs, it doesn't work anymore. This happened to me on PaperPort 12 while doing my review. Now, if Nuance finds you in violation of the T&C's they can null out your activation key and you'd have to contact Nuance support— and I wouldn't assume they'd be very forgiving; but it's a chance you take. good luck
Later,
Larry
Hello Henry – I am having a problem printing documents from my desktop using the PaperPort Image Printer (I am running version 14). It was working before but now nothing happens when I click on that printer. The document should show up in PaperPort but doesn't. Any suggestions?
Excellent review. Thank you for the information.
The lack of support (previously personally verified) is the direct result of "we have the only game in town". I'd love to see a competing program, preferably multi-platform.
I wish paperport had a way to back-up the files I scan through it. I realize they are on my hard drive but it is very cumbersome and time consuming to save each file one at a time. Neat Receipts has a back-up function that compresses the copied files and it allows you save all the scanned receipts in one fie. I guess Nuance is afraid if they make it easy for you to back up your files then you won't pay the high fee to put everything in their cloud. Any info on a way to back-up files would be appreciated.
Paperport 14 repeatedly freezes when accessing network folders. Nuance support is crappy. Have been a long-time support tech trying to resolve Paperport issues since Paperport 7 — can't say there has been any improvement in program stability for business use. Might be ok on a single-user, home computer — definitely not ready for prime time.