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Scan Away

In our tests, PaperPort Deluxe performed well, doing an excellent job of capturing magazine pages and photos that we scanned with a Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet G85. We used the included tools to fine-tune our images, before generating color photocopies and creating Web pages featuring properly proportioned thumbnails and full-size views of the scanned documents.

Users of Visioneer's sheetfed scanner hardware gain the added advantage of having PaperPort Deluxe automatically launch and start scanning upon the insertion of a document into the scanner.

However, keep in mind that PaperPort is not designed for high-volume work. While there is virtually no limit on how many folders you can have, for optimal performance ScanSoft recommends you limit yourself to 200 documents per folder. To support higher scan volumes--as well as gain greater flexibility--you'll want to step up to PaperPort Deluxe's sibling, the $100 Pagis Pro Millennium Scanning Suite. This suite includes ScanSoft's full-featured OCR package, TextBridge Pro Millennium, as well as photo editing capabilities with ScanSoft's Kai's PhotoSoap 2.

The biggest reason for current PaperPort users to upgrade is version 7.0's support of the latest software, including Windows 2000, Microsoft Office 2000, and America Online 5.0. Also new to this version is the integration of EchoBahn.com's BookmarkExpress, which enables thumbnail views of Web-browser bookmarks and Favorites from within PaperPort Deluxe, and lets you synchronize bookmarks via a central server.

Though not a major upgrade, PaperPort Deluxe 7.0's handful of new features and interface refinements make getting organized easier than ever.