Pardon the necropost. If you simply *must* have this, the new version is on sale until 10/26/2010:

http://www.irislink.com/c2-1791-189/IRIS...rview.aspx

You'll need to get the Asian version to get Japanese language support. You don't need the executive, unless you're a barcode-scannin' fool.

If you already have a flatbed scanner, get good OCR software instead unless you're on the road a lot, and can deal with the pen's quirks. I don't use it very often anymore, unless I'm going to be entering in a lot of sentences from a book, and I don't have a flatbed handy. So... almost never. But since it's on sale, I figured I'd put it here, just in case.

thanks!!

Hi, I'm umming and ahing over buying it, does the flatbed scanner version - i.e. Readiris Pro Asian do vertical text? It seems like the pen does, but I can't say I'm that interested in the pen.

Also, how good is it? I've used google's freeware Japanese ocr, which gives a not awful result if the uploaded image is b&w bitmap, high resolution and sans-serif font without any formatting... but I wonder if I pay for the Readiris version am I going to see a massive improvement in quality, ability to deal with say paragraph indentations / block quotes, vertical text etc? That would be worth the money even if Google makes a much better free one in 5 years or so.

I use omnipage with my regular scanner/printer and it does vertical and horizontal very well. of course, I did have my friend help me to figure out the program (not too user friendly) but the results were great. does that answer your question?

I haven't been able to use Readiris Pro (I have v11, v12 is the current version) with my scanner in a while, because my old scanner won't work with Win 7, so I can't say anything too definite, just what I can foggily remember. I can say it will scan vertical text, and it does a fairly good job of scanning Japanese.

It has a hard time with underlined text, and underlines in general, which is really annoying.

What it does *not* do a good job of doing is scanning Japanese and English text combined on a page. It will either scan the Japanese text and mess up the English, or scan the English and mess up the Japanese. It doesn't do a good job of both. (You have to set the language in one of the menus and rescan. Pain in the neck.)

But it does do a reasonably good job of scanning PDF and JPG files, which is handy.

Maybe someone else has other OCR info? Search for OCR in the forums and see what turns up.

Oh, if you do decide to get the IRIS version of anything, make sure you get the Asian version, or else you won't get Japanese language support.

The latest version of 読んde!!ココ looks really cool:

Main Page:
http://ai2you.com/ocr/

More Details/Buying here:
http://ai2you.com/shopai2you/ocr/koko13.asp

Even More Details:
http://ai2you.com/ocr/product/koko13/workings.asp

It claims to handle smudged kanji and underlined words-- two of my pet peeves, which IRIS' products tend to choke on. Plus, it has a bunch of built-in dictionaries to help with recognition. It claims to be able to handle both kana, kanji, and alphanumeric text on the same page as well, something else that ReadIris chokes on frequently.

If it does what it claims to, then it would be a heck of a lot better than anything IRIS puts out, for a lot cheaper. 13,000 yen for the full download version. A bit pricey given the strong yen, but worth it if it's headache-free OCR. Downside is that it's all in Japanese.

Upside is that you'll learn a LOT of Japanese.

The one thing going for the IRIS product is its ability to handle a bunch of different languages, but if you're just doing Japanese, this looks pretty hot.

Thanks rich_f, the all Japanese isn't a problem, and the price is definitely better. To be honest, a Japanese producer is likely to have better technology at recognising their own language than a foreign competitor, I would have thought!
However.... 残念 i have a mac so no go for either cheap 読んde!!ココ or the expensive omnipage.
Looks like my only option is in fact iris!

Thanks for your help! Being able to read vertical text, was the biggest thing for me.

I just received the Express (Asian Vers) and I'm impressed.
It's not perfect, but I can finally study using normal Japanese books, without it becoming a chore. That thing alone makes it worth my every single yen...
I'll write some more about it later, I gotta go now...