After being asked to pay yet another upgrade fee by Readiris, I decided to trial ABBYY.

The most important feature for me, is the the accuracy, I can use the results without having to edit and double check. That is not something I could ever do with Readiris Pro.
I have had several versions of Readiris, including the server version for watched folders - but if the accuracy is lacking - it defeats the purpose.
The files need to be properly searchable.

I have found interesting ways to incorporate ABBYY into our workflow using applescript and automator.

ABBYY seems to be able to handle documents with multiple languages as well, so documents with foreign place names are handled correctly. Something Readiris never managed for me.

I am happy that Readiris wanted an upgrade fee because it forced me to reconsider my options - it has been a big step forward.

Where is the 8.01.6996 update???

Having tried this vs Omnipage and Readiris, with the same text, there's no doubt: ABBYY is the winner!
The other two produced nothing usable, full of errors that you must manually correct (and the "learning mode" is even worse!).
The ease of use for the OCR part is amazing, but there is no fine tuning available here, and it's pretty hard to reorder pages after you've scanned them.
Anyway, it does so little errors that it's unbelievable.
It was the first time in my life that I needed OCR (for work), so I won't buy it for myself, but if I must give an advice to some of my employers, this will definitely be my choice (and it's the cheapest one!!!)

Just tried the trial hit it with some docs. It was almost perfect! Will buy. Simple and easy. Stable and fast. I did not even use 300dpi on it, it still was perfect just warned 300dpi may give better results but it worked great on 150dpi docs. A star off as it needs some more features and toolbar buttons etc but the OCR engine is 5 stars.

I also like read iris but since I can't get a trial they can go spin. It also costs more for very little extras.

ABBYY is the one for Mac users for sure. The software feels Mac the others feel they are trying to be Mac.

I've used this software, in different versions, but I've always noticed that the character recognition is speedy, accuracy impressive (about 99%, by my rough count), and very easy to use. FineReader Express relies on a minimal design with a small footprint. My preferred work flow is to scan from a TWAIN compliant Canon scanner, after which the completed document appears on MS Word; from there, you can manually edit, if necessary.

OCR software is never going to be cheap, but at a retail of $99, it's the most competitive software available for the Mac.

Playing around with the software, and I have one problem: it isn't possible to do any kind of fine tuning on multi-pages documents. When I modify anything and go to the next page, the changes on the previous page are lost (if I navigate back, everything is back the way it was).

The help in the software is very limited and on the website it's just a joke.

Their only (but big) advantage is that they got the best engine so far. But the interface is pretty bad I have to say.