I finally shrugged my shoulders and upgraded my Finereader 11 to Finereader 12, and my first impression is that the two are almost identical. Finereader 11 was a big step forward. Finereader 12 I think is mainly cosmetic changes from Finereader 11. Finereader 12 does offer more convenient access to "charmap"-like access to the European extension glyphs from within that Finereader editor, which I am finding myself spending more and more time in as I learn how to use it better. IE I'm spending more and more time doing initial editing in the Finereader editor, before exporting into a variety of other formats - including PDF/A for future reference. Finereader 12 seems to still have some "early release" crash issues, where hopefully future bug fix releases will start to clean those crashes up. Finereader 11 also had such early teething problems. If one has an opportunity to pick up 11 cheap [and it looks line one can get a copy for $47], I would say maybe "go for it" rather than $80 for the sales price upgrade to 12. And this is USA-talk - I don't know what deals ABBYY has or doesn't have in other countries.