Scanning, manupilating, and converting typed documents into text

I had my lab results back for about a month. I've decided to scan the pages into the computer for keepsake. So I undusted and set up my old flatbed scanner and digitized them into ones and zeros. Then I figured, why not to convert the contents on the scanned images into text? I installed the only free OCR (optical character recognition) software I could find on Google. It's called SimpleOCR. I thought it was one of those things too good to be true. But indeed, it was absolutely free! No string attached. The built-in scan option was so easy to use and and so much faster than the software bundled with the scanner that I simply threw away the scanned images and started from scratch. SimpleOCR's OCR feature is decent. I am certain there are products with better accuracy out there. But how can you beat something free? And to my pleasant surprise, SimpleOCR provides options to save the converted text into Microsoft Word format. I remember the other day I needed something to convert my scanned documents into a single multi-page TIFF file. I just couldn't find anything free that was remotely usable. It turned out the free SimpleOCR has the capability built-in. And the TIFF file it created for my three-page document was only 67KB in size, which was even smaller than 72KB, the size of the Microsoft Word 6.0 file it produced for the same document. What else can one ask for from a free product?