Pagekeeper Pro 3.0 English International

Rating:
Summary: PageKeeper Pro 3.0 Fails to Live Up to Potential
Review: An earlier version of this program came bundled with my scanner; after seeing its potential, I purchased the upgraded PageKeeper Pro 3.0. The software has tremendous potential as a consumer-oriented visual document management tool. I have experienced a number of problems and frustrations with it, though, and am waiting hopefully for further upgrading.

First, the program seems to run agonizingly slowly. I can accept one to three minutes of processing time when a document is scanned, particularly with large, true color images. However, forty-five seconds is too long to wait just to reach the screen where you type in the name of the document to be scanned. And that's after waiting another minute for the program to open and load. You can't leave it running in the background because it hogs resources.

Second, I couldn't get a lot of the features to work at all. The search feature (PageKeeper Find) is useless; it failed to detect the existence of images and documents whose thumbnails I was looking at as it searched, and failed to exclude dozens of similar-but-not-identical documents when it did find something. Likewise, I was unable to get Smart Folders to work at all; documents scanned into the default folder remained there without being "automatically moved" into the appropriate "Smart" subfolder.

Third, the links between the virtual filing system and the physical filing system are easily broken. Once that happens, you have to remove the thumbnail from the virtual filing system -- wherever it occurs -- and then reprocess it.

Fourth, I wish the program allowed you to maintain documents physically on a CD-ROM; it doesn't permit that, so unless you have unlimited hard disk space for the storage of large numbers of huge image files, you have to transfer them all back onto the hard disk and wait for them to be processed again.

Despite all of that, I am still struggling to use the program and waiting hopefully for an upgrade. The virtual filing system seems like a good idea, because it allows you to organize documents and view their thumbnails easily. It's also great for storage of images of documents that you want to throw out.

Rating:
Summary: PageKeeper Pro 3.0 Fails to Live Up to Potential
Review: An earlier version of this program came bundled with my scanner; after seeing its potential, I purchased the upgraded PageKeeper Pro 3.0. The software has tremendous potential as a consumer-oriented visual document management tool. I have experienced a number of problems and frustrations with it, though, and am waiting hopefully for further upgrading.

First, the program seems to run agonizingly slowly. I can accept one to three minutes of processing time when a document is scanned, particularly with large, true color images. However, forty-five seconds is too long to wait just to reach the screen where you type in the name of the document to be scanned. And that's after waiting another minute for the program to open and load. You can't leave it running in the background because it hogs resources.

Second, I couldn't get a lot of the features to work at all. The search feature (PageKeeper Find) is useless; it failed to detect the existence of images and documents whose thumbnails I was looking at as it searched, and failed to exclude dozens of similar-but-not-identical documents when it did find something. Likewise, I was unable to get Smart Folders to work at all; documents scanned into the default folder remained there without being "automatically moved" into the appropriate "Smart" subfolder.

Third, the links between the virtual filing system and the physical filing system are easily broken. Once that happens, you have to remove the thumbnail from the virtual filing system -- wherever it occurs -- and then reprocess it.

Fourth, I wish the program allowed you to maintain documents physically on a CD-ROM; it doesn't permit that, so unless you have unlimited hard disk space for the storage of large numbers of huge image files, you have to transfer them all back onto the hard disk and wait for them to be processed again.

Despite all of that, I am still struggling to use the program and waiting hopefully for an upgrade. The virtual filing system seems like a good idea, because it allows you to organize documents and view their thumbnails easily. It's also great for storage of images of documents that you want to throw out.