SAN FRANCISCO (06/23/2000) - Need to get your desk organized? ScanSoft Inc.'s PaperPort Deluxe 7 is a new document management package aimed at getting stray papers off your desk and into your PC.
With the click of a button, the software lets you scan documents and add them to the PaperPort Desktop, where you can store them with related electronic documents. The US$60 program ($30 upgrade) works with most TWAIN-compatible scanners.
In my tests, a shipping version brought documents directly to its Desktop and displayed them as thumbnails that I could enlarge, tweak, and print. And once PaperPort indexed my hard drive, I could store the thumbnails (pointers to a file's physical location on the hard drive) with thumbnails of other scanned files.
You can organize thumbnails by dragging and dropping them into nested folders, or you can use application links to launch documents from within PaperPort (it supports about 150 applications). A toolbar lets you scan directly to a supported application.
The program includes basic document and photo editing, as well as components for filling in forms, performing optical character recognition, and even generating Web pages.
--Melissa J. Perenson
PaperPort Deluxe 7
PRO: Easy-to-use visual document management.
CON: A critical upgrade only if you need support for the latest apps.
VALUE: Smooth paper manager.
List price: $60 ($30 upgrade)
ScanSoft
888/345-6203
www.scansoft.com.