I was reading this review of the Fujitsu SnanSnap S500m, which brought my attention to DEVONthink Pro Office. The software stores all your PDF files (plus other file types) and indices them all. The “Office” version has a built-in OCR engine to convert images into text for indexing. I wish I knew about the Office version before I started the course.
The built-in OCR engine however doesn’t do Chinese OCR, but Readiris has a standalone product Readiris Asian, which I have played with (came with an HP Scanjet at the office) and it does traditional as well as simplified Chinese OCR reasonably well.
If I had to start my course now, I would probably go for Readiris Asian and DEVONthink Pro, which would OCR and index all my Chinese and English reading and reference materials and would be totally unbeatable.