Although optical character recognition (OCR) software has made some impressive leaps forwards in recent years, it is still not quite perfect. Visioneer is the latest to make an attempt at perfection with Pro OCR 100 and, to be fair, does a pretty good job. Competing against the 'big two' packages, from Xerox and Caere, Pro OCR 100 matches them on price and features, and seems to have the edge in both recognition speed and the ability to handle complex documents.

To begin the OCR process, you can either import a previously-scanned image, in TIFF or PCX format, or connect directly to any TWAIN- or ISIS-compliant scanner. Once you've got the document image you require, you can then leave the rest of the recognition process to the program, if you wish. It will then calculate what it thinks is the most appropriate method of recognising the text, producing a result which you can then check for errors. However, we found that this was not the best way to proceed. Instead, it is better to work through the document manually, zoning the page into areas containing graphics (which the OCR engine will ignore), text and tables. Then the OCR engine has a better chance of producing decent output.

That output can then be proofed, using the program's own built-in dictionary, to which you can add your own words. Once the document has been checked in this way, it can be exported in one of a wide range of formats. There's standard ASCII and Rich Text Format, of course, but also the major word-processors from Microsoft, Lotus and Corel are catered for, as is HTML for those looking to publish straight to the Web. The more advanced file formats will retain details such as columns and tables, both of which Pro OCR 100 handles remarkably well.

With one of the simplest user interfaces of any OCR package, Pro OCR 100 does its best to make new users feel at home. There's an OCR wizard to guide you through the scanning, zoning, recognition and proofing processes, and all the buttons and pull-down menus are clearly and unambiguously identified. Manuals are included on paper and on CDROM, but for the most part it's unlikely that you'll have to refer to them too much.

Fast, simplicity itself to use and accurate too, this is one of the best OCR packages on the market. It still can't manage 100 percent accuracy, but in our tests it achieved over 95 percent every time, even with complicated document layouts that included diagrams and tables.