Persuading people to upgrade their OCR (optical character recognition) package isn't the easiest of tasks. For example, Nuance claims this new version of OmniPage is no less than 42 percent more accurate than its predecessor. An impressive figure, but one that needs to be put into context, since OmniPage 16 also boasted near flawless OCR.

The interface hasn't changed much from the previous edition. Four boxes are lined up along the top and allow access to the most common OCR tasks. The first box lets you select what mode you want to use, the second lets you select the input file, while the third and fourth are for telling OmniPage what to do with the document and where to save it.

Having to select an option from a drop-down box and then click the button above it isn't the most intuitive of menu systems, though, and we're a little surprised Nuance didn't take the opportunity to redesign the interface.

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Setting it up to work with a scanner is no problem at all. The scanner wizard first downloads a list of compatible scanners from the Nuance site, and you then pick your model. If your scanner isn't listed, all is not lost, but you will have to trudge through the manual process of setting it up, which can take a while.

One of the new features in OmniPage 17 is ability to send documents direct to Amazon Kindle ebook readers. All you need to do is bash in your Kindle account info and OmniPage 17 will do the rest. Given that there isn't exactly a huge number of Kindle users in the world, though, it's not a feature everyone will appreciate.

Integration with Microsoft Office is perhaps a more useful new feature, allowing you to convert images into text without first having to load the main OmniPage 17 interface. Meanwhile, language support has been improved, with Chinese, Japanese and Korean all welcomed to the party.

Nuance also claims OmniPage 17 loads up to 200 percent faster than previous version. But, like the increase in accuracy, this impressive statistic is tempered by the fact that older versions weren't exactly slow to load.

So what's OmniPage 17 like in terms of accuracy? Well, if you present it with a scan of a simple page of A4 text it's highly likely to deal with it without fault. Indeed, in our tests it coped admirably.

Naturally, if you feed it a more complex document, such as one with small text and a spattering of pictures and tables, a few errors are likely to crop up. When we troubled it with a page from a magazine that contained a mixture of text and graphics, it made a decent fist of it. However, some odd errors did creep in, such as occasional small indents in some of the passages of text. It also struggled to recognise some of the heavier text, even though it looked perfectly clear to us.

Strangely, in the summary provided after the OCR process, OmniPage 17 delighted in telling us that the process had been 100 percent accurate, even though we'd had to correct a few errors.

Nuance introduced the ability to OCR documents snapped by digital cameras in OmniPage 16, and it's updated the feature with this version. When we gave it a trial run, it managed to successfully de-skew the image but accuracy wasn't quite so hot, with more than a few recognition errors cropping up. How well this feature performs for you will depend on the quality of the photograph: Nuance recommends at least a 2-megapixel camera.

If you're the proud owner of OmniPage 16, it's unlikely the new features in version 17 will be enough to persuade you to part with your cash. There's no doubt it's a hugely impressive OCR package, but there simply aren't enough useful brand new features. Owners of version 15 and lower, however, will find more value in an upgrade. And at this price, the standard edition won't break the bank.