opinions on linux ocr vs something in windows

[Adam Myrow]

I've never played with any of the commercial OCR stuff, so I can't comment 
on how good it is, but I can say this with certainty.  The free stuff 
isn't usable.  I'd call it experimental at best, but my experience is, 
that neither ocrad nor gocr could recognize a printout from an inkjet 
printer without dozens of errors.  Of course, there aren't a lot of 
programmers who are knowledgeable about how OCR works willing to write free 
software, plus, it's a very small market.  So, I'm not holding my breath. 
I certainly don't understand much about how OCR works, so I don't think 
I'd be of much use.  It's really a bummer, and the commercial stuff looks 
to be a real bear to get working, especially if you happen to use a Linux 
distro other than Redhat/Fedora Core.  That's my biggest hold-up as well 
and why I still have Windows XP.  That, and the numerous web pages which 
use Java Script in some way just to make sure you are using Microsoft's 
browser.  Mozilla will hopefully eventually level the playing field here, 
but it's proceeding rather slowly.  I think the biggest problem is that 
most of the big companies want nothing to do with Linux.  This ends up 
being a mixed blessing.  The good part is, most of what you can get for 
Linux is free, under the GPL or BSD license, but the draw-back is that 
unless you are on an email list like this, people will be totally clueless 
about support issues.