Looking for some good (ideally free) OCR software

[Hodders]

I've gat a book that my Dad wrote about 50 years ago. It is all typed using a typewriter and comes to about 400 pages.

He wants to get it onto his PC so that he can edit it and get it printed.

The first step here is to get the book OCRed.

He is very capable of doing this himself but he will need a scanner and some decent OCR software.

bearing in mind the number of pages a sheet feeder may be a good idea but may be over kill on cost (he could always put the kit on the bay once he has finished).

So any help would be great in finding a good scanner/OCR software combo.

Cheers.

 

[swinnie]

This thread might be of some use - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17967794&highlight=OCR+Software

 

[jbloggs]

For a scanner, something from Epson (Epson Perfection V200 Photo) or Canon (Canon CanoScan LiDE 200) in the £60 bracket would probably be fine, but it is the OCR software that makes all the difference. I have done quite a bit of text scanning into Word/PDF, nearly all books (out of copyright), and all I did was set up the OCR software options so that the scan started automatically, with a 5sec gap between scan, and doing a book of a few hundred pages is done quite quickly.

EDIT:

When you buy a scanner these days, you normally get some kind of basic OCR software that may do what you want.