Item: Tungsten Power PDF
Rating: 9
Author: John Bothams

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have used Power PDF for many years starting when I was still at Strathclyde University. It manages to do all the scanning, converting, copying for storing as records, resizing in a simple and satisfactory way. I upgraded to Kofax last year which has added an even greater slickness to the user interface.

Pros and Cons

Scanning from laser printer.
Converting to Word.
Copying images.
Redacting.
Simple editor for PDF.
Combing and reorganising documents.

It would be good to be alter say rectangular embedded images to rounded corners or circles.
Modifying logos
Easier way to mange undoing changes - so if you do not notice something in a sequence you do not have to redo sequence. Maybe I have just not found that.

Return on Investment

In the small business environment the greatest advantage is the time saving of multi-usage within one software rather than having to use 3 or more different ones.
The cost of the one piece of software is clearly cheaper than two or three.
Easily managing to store output of all documents on a computer with easy back up to file rather than online.

Ease-of-Use

I have seen the improvements over a quite a number of years so have known first hand the improvements and I valued the updates. In particular the accuracy and clarity of OCR recognition. The ease of conversion to other formats for distribution to customers who have different systems. One gets the sense that the developers are constantly looking to keep up with any competitors so that you do not have change to alternatives.

Alternatives Considered

Readiris

I have found Kofax Power PDF to be equally good at most uses and excels in being a very useable interface. So I would choose it not only as the best allrounder but better than many on many uses. At times others have been better for a while particularly true before 'Kofax' took over from Nuance when it languished for a while and I bought Readiris 17. I also used online versions of software but I think being able to control sensitive documents without them going into the cloud is a comfort for security reasons for smaller organisations.

Support Rating

Some initial problems that I created by my lack of understanding of the changes to the earlier Nuance version were promptly and courteously dealt with competence by the support team. This because of the scale of Kofax products focused on supporting companies of all sizes meaning support staff have good customer skills.

Key Insights

Do you think Tungsten Power PDF delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Tungsten Power PDF's feature set?

Yes

Did Tungsten Power PDF live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Tungsten Power PDF go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Tungsten Power PDF again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Xara Designer Pro, Ayoa, Xmind

Features

Scanning documents.
Converting documents.
Easy editing of text in PDF.
Sharing documents.
Pages panel for moving pages.
Joining PDFs.
Security.
Document signing.
Redaction.
Time stamping.
Watermarks especially draft.
Adding audio files to document.
Searching.
Markup.
Commenting is easy and clear and importantly editable and coupled with callouts provides easy conversation when sharing development.
Less often drawing but none the less easy to do.

Likelihood to Recommend

It works well in a small office environment where it can deal with pretty much any document based requirement. It does that simply and reliably.
With the range of abilities in a situation with a changing staff scenario - there is the possibility that there will be a requirement for staff training to even do the simplest things if they are easily daunted by the complexity. Some things are not easy to find on first use.

Why Kofax is a well programmed software and great allrounder for anything that could involve PDF management

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Kofax Power PDF (formerly Nuance)