Foraging forward with Read and Write Gold

Goal for spring: get more students using technology.
Objective 1: Figure out how to use RWG :)
Welp, first, it won't talk to the scanner here at all... so that's out.
Scanned an article to a PDF (since the scanner won't do OCR) - and it's tolerable for me... which means possibly not good enough at all for our students. It saw one out of three commas as periods in numebrs, so while "33,000" was "thirty-three thousand," it read "25,000" as "twenty-five point zero zero zero."
That ain't gonna cut it...
I also downloaded the free "SImple OCR," and somehow got past the recommended tutorial. That's too bad, because all the "help" is geared towards their pay-to-play product, "Softwriter," which I infer turns handwriting into text.
THe process continues...

Update: so... when I downloaded SimpleOCR, I happened to notice that, um, the first program on the list of programs was the OCR program that people have been saying is the best value out there. As in, it's on the computer already.
I am much happier, 'cause p'raps I can figure out a way to convey those thousands, since I can edit the text.
'Tis time to clear out, though - it's 5:00 and there is pink approaching on the radar. Happily, I can Use Phone As Modem at home (tho' I don't have RWG there).