PEABODY, Mass., September 25, 2002 - ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT), the leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions, today announced that OmniPage Pro® 12 Office was awarded PC Magazine's highest editorial honor, the Editors' Choice Award, for optical character recognition (OCR) software.

Released in August, the OmniPage Pro 12 family is the most accurate OCR and PDF conversion product available, a claim validated by PC Magazine's own benchmark testing of the product. Real-world test documents revealed that OmniPage® delivers 99.4% accuracy for graphically complex magazine articles, 99.4% accuracy in processing newspaper articles, and a remarkable 99.8% accuracy for laser-print quality documents.

Editors at PC Magazine lauded the value of OmniPage Pro for upgrade and new users, noting "improved usability and impressive recognition accuracy which clearly surpasses that of their previous versions." New features called out in the award include RealSpeak™ Proofing, which reads converted documents aloud using a human-sounding synthesized voice - a feature that the editors found particularly useful for confirming the conversion of spreadsheet numbers. The editors also highlighted the value of the automatic network scanning capabilities now in OmniPage Pro, which let you "completely automate the task of processing" document conversion.

"The response to the new release of OmniPage has been fantastic, which really set the stage for the product's recognition by PC Magazine," said Robert Weideman, chief marketing officer at ScanSoft. "We are particularly proud to have won the Editor's Choice Award, as it is a trusted and expert opinion on the real-world value that a product brings to end users. We thank the editors at PC Magazine for this honor."

With advanced features such as automatic document conversion to XML, scan-to-PDF and support for the Open eBook standard and batch processing, OmniPage Pro 12 Office offers a new level of functionality and ease of use for enterprise and workgroup environments. Other time-saving advances include precise document layout retention and unmatched document editing, making it easier than ever to re-create electronic documents - even those with formatted text, columns, graphics, tables and spreadsheets.

About PC Magazine

PC Magazine, the most important technology publication in the world, delivers authoritative, labs-based comparative reviews of computing and Internet products to more than 6.6 million highly engaged technology buyers. PC Magazine defines technology for e-business and is the only magazine with in-depth reviews and accurate, repeatable testing from PC Magazine Labs placed in the unique context of today's business technology landscape.

About ScanSoft, Inc.

ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT) is the leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual processes - saving time, increasing worker productivity and improving customer service.

Trademark reference: ScanSoft, RealSpeak, OmniPage, and OmniPage Pro are trademarks or registered trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company names and product names mentioned may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release that relate to future plans, events or performance, including without limitation statements concerning the perceived benefits of receiving PC Magazine's Editors' Choice Award, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with market trends, competitive factors, and other risks identified in ScanSoft's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof.

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