Searchable PDFs created onboard a MFP

[SalesServiceGuy]

Any experiences on the differences between the speed and accuracy of a Searchable PDF created on board a copier like a Xerox or Konica Minolta vs a PC based OCR engine like Nuance's OmniPage Pro or Abbyy Fine Reader?

I suspect that they Xerox/KM solution is acceptable for relatively simple text documents that contain only a few pages but begin to have issues with longer more complex documents with boxes, lines, stamps, etc.

I do not see how the processing power of a MFP can compete with that of a PC when driving an OCR engine.

[TheOwl]

Re: Searchable PDFs created onboard a MFP

Why don't you think the processing power of a copier could compete with a computer?

A $30 Rasberry Pi only runs an ARM SoC processor, but has been seen to do quite a lot.

As for the Konica Minoltas, the onboard OCRing is quite comparible to software based systems running on a computer. Because you don't have the overhead of requiring a computer to be on to do the job or software licening, you are saving on cost already.

As for speed and accuracy, the accuracy is extremely good as it uses the Iamge on Text format which you will know yourself from Re-Rite, is extremely accurate. The speed isn't as fast as the stand alone ABBY engine (which just about all OCR software is jumping to for its ability to format .DOCX documents extremely well).

Horses for courses, but don't write off the onboard abilities of a device as it may come back to bite you.

[Mambawan]

Re: Searchable PDFs created onboard a MFP

I have had very good results using the Canon OCR kit for IR Adv C5030i, eCopy scan station does a really good job too but its very expensive.

Nuance PDF Pro I find generally pretty poor, having to do many manual correction after OCR'ing a document.

[emujo]

Re: Searchable PDFs created onboard a MFP

I have found that adding the searchable functionality only becomes an issue when the web browser functionality is also being used. Seems to cause a slow down with this combo. But still, when you compare adding full "Acrobat" to all the workstations versus the much lower cost LK, it's usually a no brainer. Usually we will try to upgrade with a "solution" versus the LK when the customer needs additional options like indexing or document conversion. Emujo