Installing PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 was a quick and easy process, especially since the program incorporates any scanner software that you might already use. PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 offers teaching demos for the inexperienced user, but we found this program to be highly intuitive for those familiar with windows-based navigation and functions. One thing we did notice--PaperPort Deluxe takes a heavy toll on your system's resources, so you may want to close out of especially taxing programs while running this software.
PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 includes tons of valuable features that make paying bills, organizing your home office, or doing your taxes faster and easier. You can organize your images using folders and subfolders that can be color-coded, and then annotate them with your comments, dates, history, and contexts. Manage your files visually with clear thumbnails, make use of the PaperPort search engine (which allows you to search for your documents by keywords and phrases), or drag any digital image into a Word document or spreadsheet for instant editing. For business users, PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 allows files to be shared electronically via PaperPort Online. PaperPort also does photos, so you can create albums, and add notes, flags, and annotations to keep your photographs organized and secure.
Perfect for the home office user, student, or small business owner, PaperPort 8.0 makes it easy to clean up your workspace and get organized. Depending on the speed of your scanner, PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 could possibly be faster than looking for another inch of space in your already overcrowded file drawer. --Kendra Hayden
I originally used PaperPort to organize my scanned documents but have found that it allows me to have a virtually paperless office. With PaperPort, you can create folders and subfolders just as you would organize a file cabinet. You can scan your documents to these different folders. Even better, you can select PaperPort as your printer and print directly to PaperPort. For example if you purchased something online, you would "print" the receipt to your designated PaperPort folder and never have to deal with a sheet of paper. You can similarly store downloaded items from the Internet, such as a bill or bank statement. You can electronically file any document from any application that allows you to print.
It's easy-to-use interface also allows you to drag the scanned item to different applications you might have, such as your faxing software, Outlook, or Adobe Acrobat. You can also use it to save a file into jpeg or other formats.
I have not experienced the CPU drain that others describe. I am using PaperPort on a computer with 512 MB of RAM.
I scan all of my bills, and store them electronically.
However, I recommend getting version 9. The primary file type documents are stored in is the propriatary MAX file format and extension. Version 9 has a PDF file generator, and the MAX file viewer may eventually go the way of the dinosaur. Only this company's products use it, and it's not directly supported in Windows. Company mergers and buyouts happen all of the time, but I have a feeling that PDF will be supported for many many years to come. Version 8 will store MOST PDF files, but won't generate them from scanned pages. Some encodings of PDF files will for some reason not open in version 8. Version 9 seems to handle them all.
If you only want to keep papers short term, this version is more than adequate. But if you're looking at 5-20 year retention, then you really should get the version 9 for the PDF capability. I say 5 years is critical, because future versions of Windows may eventually stop supporting this version of the program. For example, this software will NOT load on Windows 3.1...and may barely load on Windows 95. Operating systems do move ahead, and companies often just release new software to keep up.
Stable. Not buggy.
All around nice program.Manages to barely keep up, but the basic product is great I have used Paperport for years. It is an outstanding product with wonderful features. Version 8.0 Deluxe is the best yet and worth the upgrade. Unfortunately, in spite of some nice new features, there are some old things that don't work anymore or have been put in out of the way places so they are no longer readily accessable. In spite of that I am happy with the upgrade to 8.0 because of its improved robustness.
As a new user, be aware that there are also certain bugs and usability problems that never get fixed. And occassionally they re-arrange the user interface for the worse. Why they can't put functions that I use a lot on the toolbars or allow customizable toolbars, I'll never know. There is a long list of suggested bug fixes and wish list features I sent them years ago, none of which have been addressed.
They don't really seem to listen to the user community or to make changes other than to add "features" that they can use to sell new users or encourage upgrades (typical software company).
That said, the core feature set is worth having. I consider it a necessary piece of software, in just the same way a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Web Browser, Email reader are necessary. This is a Document Storage and Filing system.
You can store scanned documents in PP. It has a builtin OCR engine. You can print documents to PP (ie. print a web page you want to always have offline into PP via a "dummy" printer). You can just drag a Word or Excel, etc document into PP. You can stack and unstack pages. Straighten scanned pages (others don't need it). And you can store photos (jpgs, gifs, tifs, etc). It also has some ok photo manipulation, cut and paste, crop, etc type of features.
The program works fine. Seems a little less powerful in some of the editing and file manipulation abilities of pagis. It works better with Windows XP. One glitch, it cannot directly import my Pagis files with an *.XIF format! I have read that the new version (9.0) has a pagis importer built in.
My overall comment: If you are upgrading from Pagis wait for version 9.0 to be widely available. So I now have to upgrade or buy the newer version to have XIF compatibility?
