Verdict Capable and inexpensive OCR software. Although there are few major changes in the Millennium version, the competitive landscape has changed, as ScanSoft's acquisition of erstwhile rival Caere now makes it the dominant vendor of OCR software. TextBridge Pro Millennum runs under Windows 9x, NT 4.0 and 2000 and takes up 20MB of hard disk space. The page can be viewed either as recognised text or as the original document by clicking on the text and image tabs. Viewing the original allows you to manually edit the automatically recognised layout zones and clarify words that the program flags as problematical.
Recognition is accurate, the program coping well with tables, graphics, and a wide range of text.
Layout preservation is also good, thanks to ScanSoft's PageMirror technology. However, when scanning a picture containing text, we found that conversion to Word resulted in the text being placed on a separate page to the image. TextBridge Millennium Pro works well with other applications. It's tightly integrated with Office 2000, automatically placing icons within Word and Excel. You can also send OCR results to applications such as Microsoft Outlook, FrontPage and Internet Explorer, and mail programs including Eudora, at the click of a button.