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To start, it bears mentioning that I'm a previous Nuance (Dragon Naturally Speaking) customer, so I had no delusions about the company before selecting OmniPage 18. If you aren't a customer, then you should be aware that: 1) Their customer service is sketchy at best; 2) They'll nickel and dime you six ways from Sunday; and 3) If you give them your email address, they'll send you every Nuance-related marketing e-bumf from here to the end of time. With that said, after months of using OmniPage 18, here are my thoughts: I have three operating systems across all of my computers: Windows XP, Vista, and 7, each with system requirements exceeding the minimum required for OmniPage. My goal was to try the software across each one, however, after dealing with the headache that was installation on the XP machine, I reconsidered. The autorun refused to automatically run, so I launched the set up file manually. After the software offered me a successful installation message, I launched it only to be greeted by a cryptic error message moments before the program crashed and closed. Rather than quit, I tried my hand at troubleshooting and discovered the problem--and it wasn't pretty. (At this point, I will note that Windows XP users should simply avoid this software, especially the technophobes.) Once I had the software up and running, I gave the graphic user interface (GUI) a once over. It seemed rather simple and intuitive, but I quickly learned its appearance was deceptive if you intended to do more than a simple OCR conversion. (And by "simple OCR conversion" I mean clean black text on white background without images--usually of the kind originally created in word processing programs.) If you intend to use the extended features--for instance, a picture from your camera, or converting from a scanned book or a scanned document with an other-than-super-bright-white background--the trouble starts. What's worse is that the help documentation goes so far as to be thoroughly unhelpful, possibly detrimental. One needs a healthy amount of patience, an inquisitive spirit without aversion to experimenting with software settings (which is why I told the technophobes to run away), and a pen and paper with which to create one's own help documentation as one discovers through trial and error how to complete certain tasks. (At this point, if this doesn't sound appealing to you and you need more than basic OCR conversions done on the default settings, then you'll want to rethink this software.) The range of features this software touts is impressive and I wanted to test as many as I could before writing my review. I started with a PDF document that I originally typed in Microsoft Word. It was a plain document with plain Times New Roman text, no images, or tables--the fanciest it got was a header and a footer. OmniPage 18 converted this document into Word format beautifully, even with the header and footers intact and completely editable. Next was to try out a slightly more complicated PDF document conversion and I have to say, it passed, even where the tables were concerned. The only quibble was with the image positioning. At that point I thought maybe the software would be worth all the headaches to get it up and running. Then I moved on to converting *other* types of documents. I printed a page on bright white copy paper from my first document and snapped a picture with my iPhone camera. I made sure the area was well-lit and the document was properly positioned in the iPhone screen. (Basically, I made sure I used optimal conditions, which is probably beyond what the average user might do, so bear that in mind.) The resultant document was vastly different from my first experience. About 30% of the converted text had errors and the corrections offered seemed completely random. Next I worked on converting images I scanned directly from some books. OmniPage had a nice feature which allowed the automatic detection of the divider between two pages and that worked fairly well (that is, of course, if you can find it to use it). However, the book I scanned had slightly discolored pages and the margin of error for OmniPage went up considerably. With the increased number of errors, the more interaction with the proofreading editor I had. That proofreading editor is not user-friendly or intuitive--at least not beyond the basic corrections. And finding a productive workflow is nearly impossible because many of the features that you'll need require multiple mouse clicks to access and then process. And Heaven forbid you actually make a mistake while doing the proofreading and need to go back because that will open up a whole new can of worms. Even the files into which you can save your documents are unintuitive, because each one (even the same formats) vary slightly from one another, and there isn't any proper documentation as to the differences in each. (By the way, the ebook format into which this program exports is completely horrid. Tip: export into HTML, clean it up in a different program, and then convert it using Calibre.) However, the program does have a few redeeming qualities (hence the 2.5 stars instead of 1). It's clunky, sometimes unintuitive, borderline backwards, but once you get beyond this and find your groove, it has a few nifty features--the key is finding them. So, to close... For whom is this software? People who only need to do simple OCR conversions, or people who don't mind getting their hands messy when it comes to technical troubleshooting, people who have the patience of saints, and those who don't mind compiling their own documentation as they go along. Everyone else should probably look for something else. I hope you found this review helpful and if you have any questions about the software or my experience with it, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer. ADDENDUM: When this review was written, the price of this software was significantly higher; while that didn't factor into my star rating, it was a poor cost for value. That said, if you can find this for under fifty, the cost for value greatly improves. (My original review still stands.)