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ScanSoft Fights Paper Clutter

PaperPort Deluxe transfers all your files to digital form--and helps you manage them.

By Chris Yurko, PCWorld   

PaperPort Deluxe is scheduled to ship in an upgrade to version 7.0 on May 22. It will carry a retail price of $59.99 and will be available on CD-ROM in most computer retail stores or by direct download from ScanSoft's Web site. Upgrades for registered PaperPort customers will be available for $29.99.

ScanSoft's newest release retains all the features from previous editions of PaperPort Deluxe, and adds some new ones. PaperPort Deluxe supports 28 more applications, including many popular e-mail programs and Microsoft Windows 2000. The program also has a new function so it can store and retrieve Web pages.

Off Your Desk

The basic idea behind PaperPort is to use a desktop scanner to get all the paper items off your desktop, out of your desk drawers, and into your PC. With it, you can digitize and shrink the storage demands of letters, memos, tax forms, invoices, receipts, newspaper articles, business cards, notes, photographs, and even your children's artwork.

"All the stuff that's on your desk can be put into PaperPort," says Anita Moeder, senior product marketing manager for ScanSoft. "It then helps you find them and organize them from a single, easy interface."

PaperPort essentially creates a digital image of whatever you scan in. You can sort thumbnail-size versions of those items into files and sub-files, and retrieve them using keyword or title search functions. Using the program's optical character recognition feature, you can turn scanned documents into editable text. You can even convert them automatically into HTML for easy uploading to the Web.

PaperPort also supports application links to about 100 other applications, such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Lotus Notes, and Intuit Quicken. Version 7.0 adds support for e-mail programs, including America Online 5.0, Eudora 4.2, Microsoft Outlook 2000, and Netscape Mail 4.7.

Users can automatically launch those programs, if they have them, from within PaperPort by dragging and dropping the thumbnail images of stored documents into a shortcut link.

"The objective is to make sure customers could use their favorite applications within PaperPort without having to go from one application to another," Moeder says.

Another new feature is Bookmark Express, which allows users to capture and store Web pages and automatically update them by clicking on the thumbnail. That action will automatically launch your browser.

"It's a very flexible way of managing the Web and how you use it," Moeder says.