SPECIALIZED TESTS, CERTIFICATES
   

Version for Germany.

Version for UK.

Read the article

Read the article.

"You may find it hard to get excited about OCR software, but ABBYY U.S.A. Software House's powerful FineReader 5.0 Pro certainly did the trick for us. This program, selling for around $90, offers a terrific combination of ease of use, accuracy, automation, formatting recognition, and output flexibility that we found tough to beat. "

Read the article.

"This Russian import (the company's American division is ABBYY USA) does certain thingsùparticularly recognition and layout reproduction of complex pagesùbetter than the market-leading OmniPage Pro 11 from ScanSoft Inc."

"We found that FineReader did a somewhat better job than OmniPage of retaining formatting of the complex documents we used in testing."

Read the article.

-- German original --á
"Testsieger: FineReader Pro 5.0
Abbyys FineReader Pro 5.0 erlangte den ersten Platz, weil das Produkt über ein herausragendes Preis/Leistungsverhältnis verfügt. Zudem ist es der Firma mit der neuen Version gelungen, in punkto Erkennungsgenauigkeit nochmals zuzulegen, und die 1 : 1 Rekonstruktion der Seiten schnitt am besten ab. Eine sehr bedienerfreundliche Oberfläche und ein luxuriöser Korrektureditor unterstreichen dieses Resultat noch."

"I could say that this program, comparing the other OCR programs I've ever met, reaches the best results. ... Being suitable as for professionals and also for nonprofessional users this software is a leader in its category."

-- German original -- 
"Ein zurzeit unschlagbares Preis-Leistungs-Verhaeltnis bietet FineReader Pro 5.0. Die Software unterstuetzt die meisten Sprachen und hat eine sehr niedrige Fehlerquote. FineReader Pro 5.0 erkannte im Test die meisten farbig hinterlegten Texte und setzte das komplizierte Layout der Spiegel-Seite am besten um. Der Testsieg wurde trotzdem verpasst, denn der in unserem Vergleich stark gewichtete PDF-Export brachte nur durchwachsene Resultate. Hier besteht fuer kuenftige Versionen Nachbesserungspotenzial."

-- English translation -- 
"FineReader 5.0 Pro offers unbeatable value for money. The software supports most languages and has a very low error rate. FineReader 5.0 Pro recognised most of the texts with coloured backgrounds and transformed the complicated layout from the "Spiegel" the best. Unfortunately it wasn't awarded test winner as our test had a heavy weighting for pdf export and FineReader gave mixed results here. Here is an area to look at for future versions."

Comparative table.

Text of the article: page 1, page 2, page 3

Read the article.

"FineReader 5.0 Pro jumps from unknown to leader of the OCR pack both in value and power."
"ABBYY's FineReader 5.0 Pro is threatening to shoulder it [OmniPage] aside ... this low-priced powerhouse [FineReader Pro] from a Russian vendor may make you switch from whatever OCR package you're using now." 

"For and against
"+" Excellent recognition
"+" Multiple languages
"+" Good layout control
"+" PDF and HTML export
"-" Dark background problems

Rating - 91%"

Read the full article.

E-DOC Magazine published an article about OCR technology, implemented in medical applications. 

Computer Magazine  
FineReader's recognition accuracy with texts is very high and the errors are truly minimal. The original layout is nicely retained, even with more difficult documents.

Appreciation :
+ Accurate character recognition
+ Extensive language support
- Requires a lot of memory
- Some layout-errors may affect the final result 

"...absolute leader among OCRs and champion in recognizing "difficult" documents".
...
"It was already the champion among OCRs, and this version 5.0 further enhances its features. Its recognition engine is the best on the market." 
...
"In all this perfection it is difficult to find weaknesses..."

Full text of the article (In Italian)
translation in English 

Full text of the article (In Italian) 
Translation in English
Comparative table 

DataNews nr 12 - 30th
OCR another step closer to perfection.
Can a good product be further improved? FineReader proves that it is possible. Especially poor quality originals are more accurately recognised.

Computer Idee 29
FineReader goes one step further (than the competition) and does not only recognise the text of the document but also its complete layout.

Appreciation :
User-friendliness *****
Functions *****
Price/quality ****
General***** 

ComputerEasy (in German) : "Aufgrund guter Erkennungsraten verdienter Testsieger." 

ComputerEasy (in English): "Worthy winner on account of it's excellent recognition rate."

ComputerEasy

In German: "Aufgrund guter Erkennungsraten verdienter Testsieger."

In English: "Worthy winner on account of it's excellent recognition rate."

Read the text of the article

Quote: 
"Without doubt the best of tested programs is FineReader 5 Office, which
undisputed have overtaken all competitors. It was amazing in all the tests,
even though there were analysed low quality documents, documents printed out
dot-matrix printer.
It saved the better from tested programs layout of documents and pictures.
Received document was really copy of original."

"It is clear, that FineReader can be classified as a new category product and
it is an only representative of this category for the time being."

Read the article: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6

Read the article 

Quote:
ôFineReader 5.0 is very easy to use and its interface handy... The richness of the export formats is impressive : doc, xls, rtf, txt, txt Unicode, html, html Unicode, dbf, csv and pdf. FineReader 5.0 can support vertical and inverted texts which is much more rare... Here is a technology (IPA) that could change completely the OCR sectorö.

Read the article

In German: 
"Eines der besten OCR-Programme. FineReader 5.0 Pro ist die ideale Anwendung für alle, die viel mit Texterkennung zu tun haben."

In English: 
"One of the best OCR-Software. FineReader 5.0 Pro is the ideal application for those who have to work a lot with text recognition."

Full text of the article

In German: 
FineReader Pro 5.0 liefert hervorragende Ergebnisse, wenn es um
Texterkennung geht. Doch nicht nur das magische Auge, vor allem die
vorbildliche Benutzerführung macht dieses OCR-Programm zum Highlight =

Wenn alle Programme so zuverlässig wie der FineReader wären, leerten sich
die Leserbriefecken in den Fachzeitschriften.
(Frank Gotta) =

In English: 
FineReader Pro 5.0 produces outstanding text recognition results. Not only
the magic eye, but also the way it guides the user through the programme
makes this OCR-software a joy to use.

If only all programmes were as reliable as FineReader, then
the readers wouldn't have to write as many letters to the magazines!

January, 2001

December, 2000á

In English, from product description:
+ high accuracy of recognition
+ recognition of programming languages
+ user-friandly interface

In original, from product description:
+ Γ√±εΩα  ≥ε≈φε±≥ⁿ ≡α±∩ετφαΓαφΦ  ΣεΩ≤∞σφ≥εΓ
+ ≡α±∩ετφαΓαφΦσ  τ√ΩεΓ ∩≡επ≡α∞∞Φ≡εΓαφΦ 
+ ≤Σεßφ√Θ Φφ≥σ≡⌠σΘ± ∩εδⁿτεΓα≥σδ 

Download the article: Cover, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8.

 December, 2000 

In original: 
"T E L E G R A M 
GRATULUJEMY WYGRANEJ. PRODUKT ROKU 2000 PC WORLD KOMPUTER. KATEGORIA OCR û ROZPOZNAWANIE PISMA. PRODUKT FineReader 5.0. ZNACZEK DO WYKORZYSTANIA W MATERIALACH REKLAMOWYCH. SERDECZNIE ZAPRASZAMY DO WSPOLPRACY.
BIURO REKLAMY IDG POLAND S.A" 

In English:
"T E L E G R A M 
CONGRATULATIONS FOR WINNERS. PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2000 PC WORLD KOMPUTER. CATEGORY OCR - TEXT RECOGNITION. PRODUCT FINEREADER 5.0. LABEL TO BE USED IN ADVERTISING MATERIALS. THANK YOU FOR COOPERATION.
ADVERTISING SERVICE IDG POLAND S.A."

December, 2000. 

December 21, 2000. 

December 2000.

"From the early OCR programs that could only translate text into a single font and size, OCR softwares have come a long way. The reader's choice in this category was more or less expected from our side. Yes ! FineReader 4.0 Standard got over 70 percent of the votes. Next in the line was Caere Omni Page 10."

December 2000.

December, 2000.

In original: "Meinung: FineReader 5.0 uberzeugt auf ganzer Linie: Es ist das beste OCR-Programm, das wir je getestet haben."

In English: "Opinion: FineReader 5.0 convinces in all respects: It is the best OCR-software we ever tested." 

Text of the article

November, 2000

"Well reknown by many specialists as one of the most performing OCR program, FR with its version 5.0 is once again one step ahead in accuracy and offers large possibilities of OCR process and export formats".

Full text of the article.

September, 2000.

Italy. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was estimated as an "excellent" product by PC WORLD ITALIA.

Valuation: "OTTIMO" = EXCELLENT, score 5 "W" out of 5 possible.

Read the full text of the article. 

July, 2000. 

France. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 wins in comparative test and receives an "Editor's Choice" from Windows News (France). 

" The best results obtained. With its reasonable price and performances, FineReader is number one... OCR results of texts in color and in columns are very satisfying. More over, the user interface is very clear."

"The winner of document layout restoration ... Very good in text and table recognition... Few minutes to recognize with FineReader... Nothing wrong with recognized tables exported to Excel, with a rate of 99,91 % in restoration. FineReader replicates lines, columns, numbers and characters as of their original place."

Download the article: pages 1-2, pages 3-4, pages 5-6

June, 2000. 

Germany. FineReader 4.0 Standard won in comparative test, held by German magazine PC Shopping, and received an "Editor's Choice" award. 

"The best application of our test definitely turned out to be FineReader by ABBYY Software House, distributed in Germany by MitCom. This application showed the best results in recognition of both Spiegel (journal) and Frankfurter Allgemeine (newspaper) pages. The export in PDF had also been very good. The quality and reasonable price of FineReader make it the winner of the PC-SHOPPING test. The runner-up was OmniPage. The Caere product made just too many errors in recognizing a book page and a page from Spiegel journal."

June, 2000. 

France. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 won first place in review held by Micro Hebdo magazine/France (ex-aequo with OmniPage). 

"FineReader is the revelation of this comparative test ... a real OP rival. Excellent in OCR. It is the only OCR program that offers the possibility to export in PDF format. It is better than OP for table recognition. It is a bit slow and the installation procedure is old-fashioned (diskette + CD). In spite of this and given its global performance, it does not prevent us from to award it the best quality/price ratio."

Read the article.

May, 2000

Belgium. FineReader is highly estimated by 
"De Standaard" Belgium (http://www.standaard.be/)

"Two conclusions. The first is that the software which is delivered with your scanner is as good as useless. The second is that fortunately there are good and inexpensive alternatives. Or actually one alternative. FineReader Standard 4.0 is not only cheaper, faster and more user-friendly than the competition, it also obtains a very high recognition ratio even when the original is of poor quality."

May, 2000

Belgium. ABBYY FineReader received award "Best Buy" from PC World Belgium in comparative test with IRIS (OCR Express/OCR2000).

"Both competitors succeeded in reconstructing a table, even under
difficult circumstances (the second table was taken from a fax and
printed on dark blue paper). But in order to reach the accuracy of
FineReader, the file proposed by ReadIris had to be manipulated since the program refused to recognize the contents of specific cells. In both cases all the recognized numbers were correct."

"Selecting a scanner does not present any problems but is more automated in FineReader, which encountered no problems whatsoever with either of the scanners used during the test. In ReadIris the scanner has to be selected from a list ... in which one of the scanners (an HP scanner!) was missing."

April, 2000

France. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 wins in comparative test (18 of 20 possible points) and receives an "Editor's Choice" from PC Magazine/France.

Read the article: Page 1, Page 2, Comparative table.

April, 2000

Italy.  FineReader 4.0 Pro is considered the "unbeatable" OCR in comparative test against OmniPage 10 by PC Open.

FineReader 4.0 Pro	OmniPage 10
Unbeatable with ôdifficultö documents	The first with high quality documents
Can save in PDF format	It chooses the most similar fonts
Against	Against
It does not chose the most similar fonts	Problems with small fonts
Colored images are a little too dark	Not precise in recognizing inverted text
Global score 9,7 of 10	Global score 9,2 of 10

Read the full text of the article (in Italian) 

Read the translation of comparative table (In English)

April 06, 2000

Poland. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Professional wins in comparative test held by CHIP (Poland) and receives CHIP Tip Power award, FineReader 4.0 Standard receives CHIP Tip Econo award.

April 01, 2000

Belgium. ABBYY FineReader beat its competitors (Caere OmniPage Pro 10, IRIS ReadIRIS Pro 5.5, Recognita Plus 4.0 and ScanSoft Textbridge Pro 9.0) in comparative test and was awarded "Editors' Choice" by PC Professional (Belgium).

"FineReader's latest version is very convincing."

"When it comes to text recognition, FineReader is the best. " 

Please read the quotes below or full text of the article.

2000, March.

Belgium. Netwerk Magazine (Belgium) published review about FineReader:

"Scanning and recognizing of magazine texts with images and text in different font types and sizes is often a nightmare for OCR products, but FineReader manages really well. "

Read the full text of the article.

2000, March.

 Italy. ABBYY FineReader is considered to be the best OCR on the market by PC PROFESSIONALE (Mondadori). Please read the quotes below or full text of the article (on Italian) 

"àwe tested the three main software in the OCR category, distributed in Italy: Fine Reader 4 Professional by ABBYY, TextBridge Pro 9.0 by Scansoft and the brand new Omnipage Pro 10.0 by Caere. 

à only FineReader allows exporting in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF)...

FineReader 4 Professional is the software that offered the best results as far as complex format maintaining of documents is concerned. 

...We were very impressed by the capability of FineReader to maintain original formatting of documents, recognizing columns, tables and images.

During our test FineReader showed to be the best OCR in todayÆs market as far as the recognition (and therefore export) of complex formatted pages, with tables and images, is concerned." 

Full text of the article (1st part, 2nd part)

2000, March 

Germany. In comparative test, held by ComputerBild (Germany) FineReader 4.0 Standard received the first place and award "Test Sieger" (The Test Winner).

"FineReader delivers the best results."

"FineReader Standard" is the only program which contains a spell-checker to improve the recognition quality."

"The Test Winner" Fine Reader offers the best recognition results and can handle different typefaces, type sizes, and formats, distinguishing between normal, bold and underscored text."

2000, March 

France. ABBYY FineReader was nominated for Windows News award "Product of the year". 

"...Each year Windows News awards the products that will mark the year. For the year 2000, over all the hardware and software products that we  tested, 90 of them were selected. Because of its original feature, its quality and technical excellence, your product was distinguished and is among the winners in our purchasing guide..." 

2000, February

In comparative test held by PC WORLD Hong Kong - ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Standard received the "Best Buy" award. 

"...The quality of FineReader's work with tables is remarkably high... Overall, FineReader produced the most consistent set of results... But the package walked away with our "Best Buy" because it's most impressive in its ability to mirror very closely the layouts of our variety of test documents - including handling text wrapped around images."

2000, January

In comparative test, held by PCGo! magazine (Germany) - ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was awarded the first place with remark: "sehr gut". 

ABBYY FineReader - sehr gut (very good - best buy)
Data Becket TextScan 2000 - ausreichend (sufficient)
Scanning Suite Omnipage Pro 9.0 - gut (good)
Pagis Pro 3.0 Scanning Suite- sehr gut (very good - best buy)
PaperPort OCR - gut (good)

1999, December

In comparative test, held by PC Professionell magazine (Germany) - ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was awarded the first place with remark: sehr gut. 
FineReader Professional 4.0 - sehr gut (very good)
OmniPage Pro 9.0 - gut (good)
TextBridge Pro 9.0 - befnedigend (sufficient)
Recognita Plus 4.0 - befriedigend (satisfying)
Readiris Pro 5.0 - gut (good)

"As for the recognition FineReader 4.0b Pro is by far the strongest program"

1999, December

In comparative test, held by the most popular computer science magazine in Greece - RAM Magazine ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was awarded the first place with degree 10 out of 10. 

"FineReader is, by far, the best OCR S/W of this test (the rest OCR programs were: Recognita Plus 4.0, ReadIris Pro 5.0 and a Greek program called ôAnagnostis 3.2 Proö). The precision of recognition is, sometimes, 100%, not only in Greek, as well as in Greek-English texts"

1999, October

On the exhibition INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL 
FAIR - AUTUMN'99 held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, ABBYY FineReader 4.0 received Golden Medal Award.

International Fair - Plovdiv is committed to organize the biggest, most prestigious fairs and specialized exhibitions in Bulgaria. Around 4 700 companies from 50 countries participate annually in events staged by International Fair - Plovdiv. Over 600 000 attendees visit the Fair Ground.

In Bulgaria ABBYY FineReader is distributed by David Holding company.

 1999, October

Tests Archive

SPECIALIZED TESTS, CERTIFICATES
   

"For and against
"+" Excellent recognition
"+" Multiple languages
"+" Good layout control
"+" PDF and HTML export
"-" Dark background problems

Rating - 91%"

Read the full article.

E-DOC Magazine published an article about OCR technology, implemented in medical applications. 

Computer Magazine  
FineReader's recognition accuracy with texts is very high and the errors are truly minimal. The original layout is nicely retained, even with more difficult documents.

Appreciation :
+ Accurate character recognition
+ Extensive language support
- Requires a lot of memory
- Some layout-errors may affect the final result 

"...absolute leader among OCRs and champion in recognizing "difficult" documents".
...
"It was already the champion among OCRs, and this version 5.0 further enhances its features. Its recognition engine is the best on the market." 
...
"In all this perfection it is difficult to find weaknesses..."

Full text of the article (In Italian)
translation in English 

Full text of the article (In Italian) 
Translation in English
Comparative table 

DataNews nr 12 - 30th
OCR another step closer to perfection.
Can a good product be further improved? FineReader proves that it is possible. Especially poor quality originals are more accurately recognised.

Computer Idee 29
FineReader goes one step further (than the competition) and does not only recognise the text of the document but also its complete layout.

Appreciation :
User-friendliness *****
Functions *****
Price/quality ****
General***** 

ComputerEasy (in German) : "Aufgrund guter Erkennungsraten verdienter Testsieger." 

ComputerEasy (in English): "Worthy winner on account of it's excellent recognition rate."

ComputerEasy

In German: "Aufgrund guter Erkennungsraten verdienter Testsieger."

In English: "Worthy winner on account of it's excellent recognition rate."

Read the text of the article

Quote: 
"Without doubt the best of tested programs is FineReader 5 Office, which
undisputed have overtaken all competitors. It was amazing in all the tests,
even though there were analysed low quality documents, documents printed out
dot-matrix printer.
It saved the better from tested programs layout of documents and pictures.
Received document was really copy of original."

"It is clear, that FineReader can be classified as a new category product and
it is an only representative of this category for the time being."

Read the article: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6

Read the article 

Quote:
ôFineReader 5.0 is very easy to use and its interface handy... The richness of the export formats is impressive : doc, xls, rtf, txt, txt Unicode, html, html Unicode, dbf, csv and pdf. FineReader 5.0 can support vertical and inverted texts which is much more rare... Here is a technology (IPA) that could change completely the OCR sectorö.

Read the article

In German: 
"Eines der besten OCR-Programme. FineReader 5.0 Pro ist die ideale Anwendung für alle, die viel mit Texterkennung zu tun haben."

In English: 
"One of the best OCR-Software. FineReader 5.0 Pro is the ideal application for those who have to work a lot with text recognition."

Full text of the article

In German: 
FineReader Pro 5.0 liefert hervorragende Ergebnisse, wenn es um
Texterkennung geht. Doch nicht nur das magische Auge, vor allem die
vorbildliche Benutzerführung macht dieses OCR-Programm zum Highlight =

Wenn alle Programme so zuverlässig wie der FineReader wären, leerten sich
die Leserbriefecken in den Fachzeitschriften.
(Frank Gotta) =

In English: 
FineReader Pro 5.0 produces outstanding text recognition results. Not only
the magic eye, but also the way it guides the user through the programme
makes this OCR-software a joy to use.

If only all programmes were as reliable as FineReader, then
the readers wouldn't have to write as many letters to the magazines!

January, 2001

December, 2000á

In English, from product description:
+ high accuracy of recognition
+ recognition of programming languages
+ user-friandly interface

In original, from product description:
+ Γ√±εΩα  ≥ε≈φε±≥ⁿ ≡α±∩ετφαΓαφΦ  ΣεΩ≤∞σφ≥εΓ
+ ≡α±∩ετφαΓαφΦσ  τ√ΩεΓ ∩≡επ≡α∞∞Φ≡εΓαφΦ 
+ ≤Σεßφ√Θ Φφ≥σ≡⌠σΘ± ∩εδⁿτεΓα≥σδ 

Download the article: Cover, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8.

 December, 2000 

In original: 
"T E L E G R A M 
GRATULUJEMY WYGRANEJ. PRODUKT ROKU 2000 PC WORLD KOMPUTER. KATEGORIA OCR û ROZPOZNAWANIE PISMA. PRODUKT FineReader 5.0. ZNACZEK DO WYKORZYSTANIA W MATERIALACH REKLAMOWYCH. SERDECZNIE ZAPRASZAMY DO WSPOLPRACY.
BIURO REKLAMY IDG POLAND S.A" 

In English:
"T E L E G R A M 
CONGRATULATIONS FOR WINNERS. PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2000 PC WORLD KOMPUTER. CATEGORY OCR - TEXT RECOGNITION. PRODUCT FINEREADER 5.0. LABEL TO BE USED IN ADVERTISING MATERIALS. THANK YOU FOR COOPERATION.
ADVERTISING SERVICE IDG POLAND S.A."

December, 2000. 

December 21, 2000. 

December 2000.

"From the early OCR programs that could only translate text into a single font and size, OCR softwares have come a long way. The reader's choice in this category was more or less expected from our side. Yes ! FineReader 4.0 Standard got over 70 percent of the votes. Next in the line was Caere Omni Page 10."

December 2000.

December, 2000.

In original: "Meinung: FineReader 5.0 uberzeugt auf ganzer Linie: Es ist das beste OCR-Programm, das wir je getestet haben."

In English: "Opinion: FineReader 5.0 convinces in all respects: It is the best OCR-software we ever tested." 

Text of the article

November, 2000

"Well reknown by many specialists as one of the most performing OCR program, FR with its version 5.0 is once again one step ahead in accuracy and offers large possibilities of OCR process and export formats".

Full text of the article.

September, 2000.

Italy. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was estimated as an "excellent" product by PC WORLD ITALIA.

Valuation: "OTTIMO" = EXCELLENT, score 5 "W" out of 5 possible.

Read the full text of the article. 

July, 2000. 

France. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 wins in comparative test and receives an "Editor's Choice" from Windows News (France). 

" The best results obtained. With its reasonable price and performances, FineReader is number one... OCR results of texts in color and in columns are very satisfying. More over, the user interface is very clear."

"The winner of document layout restoration ... Very good in text and table recognition... Few minutes to recognize with FineReader... Nothing wrong with recognized tables exported to Excel, with a rate of 99,91 % in restoration. FineReader replicates lines, columns, numbers and characters as of their original place."

Download the article: pages 1-2, pages 3-4, pages 5-6

June, 2000. 

Germany. FineReader 4.0 Standard won in comparative test, held by German magazine PC Shopping, and received an "Editor's Choice" award. 

"The best application of our test definitely turned out to be FineReader by ABBYY Software House, distributed in Germany by MitCom. This application showed the best results in recognition of both Spiegel (journal) and Frankfurter Allgemeine (newspaper) pages. The export in PDF had also been very good. The quality and reasonable price of FineReader make it the winner of the PC-SHOPPING test. The runner-up was OmniPage. The Caere product made just too many errors in recognizing a book page and a page from Spiegel journal."

June, 2000. 

France. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 won first place in review held by Micro Hebdo magazine/France (ex-aequo with OmniPage). 

"FineReader is the revelation of this comparative test ... a real OP rival. Excellent in OCR. It is the only OCR program that offers the possibility to export in PDF format. It is better than OP for table recognition. It is a bit slow and the installation procedure is old-fashioned (diskette + CD). In spite of this and given its global performance, it does not prevent us from to award it the best quality/price ratio."

Read the article.

May, 2000

Belgium. FineReader is highly estimated by 
"De Standaard" Belgium (http://www.standaard.be/)

"Two conclusions. The first is that the software which is delivered with your scanner is as good as useless. The second is that fortunately there are good and inexpensive alternatives. Or actually one alternative. FineReader Standard 4.0 is not only cheaper, faster and more user-friendly than the competition, it also obtains a very high recognition ratio even when the original is of poor quality."

May, 2000

Belgium. ABBYY FineReader received award "Best Buy" from PC World Belgium in comparative test with IRIS (OCR Express/OCR2000).

"Both competitors succeeded in reconstructing a table, even under
difficult circumstances (the second table was taken from a fax and
printed on dark blue paper). But in order to reach the accuracy of
FineReader, the file proposed by ReadIris had to be manipulated since the program refused to recognize the contents of specific cells. In both cases all the recognized numbers were correct."

"Selecting a scanner does not present any problems but is more automated in FineReader, which encountered no problems whatsoever with either of the scanners used during the test. In ReadIris the scanner has to be selected from a list ... in which one of the scanners (an HP scanner!) was missing."

April, 2000

France. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 wins in comparative test (18 of 20 possible points) and receives an "Editor's Choice" from PC Magazine/France.

Read the article: Page 1, Page 2, Comparative table.

April, 2000

Italy.  FineReader 4.0 Pro is considered the "unbeatable" OCR in comparative test against OmniPage 10 by PC Open.

FineReader 4.0 Pro	OmniPage 10
Unbeatable with ôdifficultö documents	The first with high quality documents
Can save in PDF format	It chooses the most similar fonts
Against	Against
It does not chose the most similar fonts	Problems with small fonts
Colored images are a little too dark	Not precise in recognizing inverted text
Global score 9,7 of 10	Global score 9,2 of 10

Read the full text of the article (in Italian) 

Read the translation of comparative table (In English)

April 06, 2000

Poland. ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Professional wins in comparative test held by CHIP (Poland) and receives CHIP Tip Power award, FineReader 4.0 Standard receives CHIP Tip Econo award.

April 01, 2000

Belgium. ABBYY FineReader beat its competitors (Caere OmniPage Pro 10, IRIS ReadIRIS Pro 5.5, Recognita Plus 4.0 and ScanSoft Textbridge Pro 9.0) in comparative test and was awarded "Editors' Choice" by PC Professional (Belgium).

"FineReader's latest version is very convincing."

"When it comes to text recognition, FineReader is the best. " 

Please read the quotes below or full text of the article.

2000, March.

Belgium. Netwerk Magazine (Belgium) published review about FineReader:

"Scanning and recognizing of magazine texts with images and text in different font types and sizes is often a nightmare for OCR products, but FineReader manages really well. "

Read the full text of the article.

2000, March.

 Italy. ABBYY FineReader is considered to be the best OCR on the market by PC PROFESSIONALE (Mondadori). Please read the quotes below or full text of the article (on Italian) 

"àwe tested the three main software in the OCR category, distributed in Italy: Fine Reader 4 Professional by ABBYY, TextBridge Pro 9.0 by Scansoft and the brand new Omnipage Pro 10.0 by Caere. 

à only FineReader allows exporting in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF)...

FineReader 4 Professional is the software that offered the best results as far as complex format maintaining of documents is concerned. 

...We were very impressed by the capability of FineReader to maintain original formatting of documents, recognizing columns, tables and images.

During our test FineReader showed to be the best OCR in todayÆs market as far as the recognition (and therefore export) of complex formatted pages, with tables and images, is concerned." 

Full text of the article (1st part, 2nd part)

2000, March 

Germany. In comparative test, held by ComputerBild (Germany) FineReader 4.0 Standard received the first place and award "Test Sieger" (The Test Winner).

"FineReader delivers the best results."

"FineReader Standard" is the only program which contains a spell-checker to improve the recognition quality."

"The Test Winner" Fine Reader offers the best recognition results and can handle different typefaces, type sizes, and formats, distinguishing between normal, bold and underscored text."

2000, March 

France. ABBYY FineReader was nominated for Windows News award "Product of the year". 

"...Each year Windows News awards the products that will mark the year. For the year 2000, over all the hardware and software products that we  tested, 90 of them were selected. Because of its original feature, its quality and technical excellence, your product was distinguished and is among the winners in our purchasing guide..." 

2000, February

In comparative test held by PC WORLD Hong Kong - ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Standard received the "Best Buy" award. 

"...The quality of FineReader's work with tables is remarkably high... Overall, FineReader produced the most consistent set of results... But the package walked away with our "Best Buy" because it's most impressive in its ability to mirror very closely the layouts of our variety of test documents - including handling text wrapped around images."

2000, January

In comparative test, held by PCGo! magazine (Germany) - ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was awarded the first place with remark: "sehr gut". 

ABBYY FineReader - sehr gut (very good - best buy)
Data Becket TextScan 2000 - ausreichend (sufficient)
Scanning Suite Omnipage Pro 9.0 - gut (good)
Pagis Pro 3.0 Scanning Suite- sehr gut (very good - best buy)
PaperPort OCR - gut (good)

1999, December

In comparative test, held by PC Professionell magazine (Germany) - ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was awarded the first place with remark: sehr gut. 
FineReader Professional 4.0 - sehr gut (very good)
OmniPage Pro 9.0 - gut (good)
TextBridge Pro 9.0 - befnedigend (sufficient)
Recognita Plus 4.0 - befriedigend (satisfying)
Readiris Pro 5.0 - gut (good)

"As for the recognition FineReader 4.0b Pro is by far the strongest program"

1999, December

In comparative test, held by the most popular computer science magazine in Greece - RAM Magazine ABBYY FineReader 4.0 was awarded the first place with degree 10 out of 10. 

"FineReader is, by far, the best OCR S/W of this test (the rest OCR programs were: Recognita Plus 4.0, ReadIris Pro 5.0 and a Greek program called ôAnagnostis 3.2 Proö). The precision of recognition is, sometimes, 100%, not only in Greek, as well as in Greek-English texts"

1999, October

On the exhibition INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL 
FAIR - AUTUMN'99 held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, ABBYY FineReader 4.0 received Golden Medal Award.

International Fair - Plovdiv is committed to organize the biggest, most prestigious fairs and specialized exhibitions in Bulgaria. Around 4 700 companies from 50 countries participate annually in events staged by International Fair - Plovdiv. Over 600 000 attendees visit the Fair Ground.

In Bulgaria ABBYY FineReader is distributed by David Holding company.

 1999, October

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