Dane-Elec DA-DP1-01GC5-R Z-PEN Wireless USB Digital Pen
by DANE ELECTRONICS
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Our Price: $49.99 Availability: Usually ships in 3-4 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Dane-Elec DA-DP1-01GC5-R Z-PEN Wireless USB Digital Pen
Customer Review: Just OK but has a very serious limitation - Bought another one - a total rip off!!
Summary: 2 Stars
If you buy this product, be prepare for problems.
When the package arrive, make sure to check for a little Quick Start Guide booklet
that suppose to come with it. You may or may not find one. If you do not find one,
then plug the receiver USB into your computer and open the PDF User's guide and
read it before you start anything. It will tell you to charge the receiver for six
hours before use. If it does not charge return the product right away.
After you charge the receiver and if it does not record your handwritting strokes very
good, return the product.
Do not do anything to void the warantee like I did (see below):
I just bought another zPen to use as a spare and backup. Also I bought it because it is on sale for
almost half of what I paid for the first pen. Here is my experience with the second pen and it is not
good:
First, when I opened the package I did not see the little Quickstart Guide booklet that I got with the first order.
As usual I followed the instruction that said you must change the cell batteries in the pen for the new one
that are included. The second thing that you need do right away is to charge the receiver for six hours before
use. By the way, I only know I suppose to do this because of my experience with the first pen. Without the
Quick Guide booklet you would not know you suppose to do this. There is nothing that let you know what
you suppose to do to get started. All the user's guides are stored in the receiver.
OK when I plug the receiver into the USB port of my computer, I got a little dialog saying there may be some
problem with my "removable drive" and it need to be scaned for possible fix. I had two options at this point
I can choose to scan or I can continue without scan. I decided to continue without scan because I want to
avoid the computer making any possible change to the receiver. After this the computer recognize the
receiver as a removable drive which it supposed to. However the problem is the receiver is not charging.
The red LED is not blinking like it supposed to. It did not matter what I did, it would not charge. Then
I remember someone on here saying that some time this product arrived with dead battery. That is exactly
what happen to me. The battery is totally DEAD! No matter how much I tried I can not recharge it.
You see there is something about this product that you are not supposed to know. It has a GP Industrial
NiMH rechargeable battery. The battery size is the standard AAA with 920mAh.
So technically you can open the four little screws in the back and replace the battery.
A WARNING: if you do this, it will void the Warantee, so don't do it.
Well I decided to take that risk and I did exactly that and the reciever was charging just fine.
Next I started my testing of the product. First it did not work very good my handing was really badly
recorded. It lost about half of my handwritting strokes. OK, I thought maybe the pen's button (cell)
batteries were bad (mind you I just install the supposely fresh batteries). So I replace the battery
again. This time I used a fresh paire of button batteries - just bought from the store. No difference!
It still not work. Then I tried using the pen from my first order (which I knew is working well), then
it work just fine. Thus I concluded that the pen that came with second order is simply defective.
This realy made me mad! It is just a rip off to sell defective product!
Recently I just got my first issue for this product. For some reason I find it difficult to turn it off
I have to press the power button like 15 or 20 times before I can mannage to turn it off. I try small pressure
high pressure, pressing at different spots.
Also I found something else very annoyance. If you let this tool sit without activity for ten minutes, it will shut
itself off automaticaly to save power. This is fine except that when you turn it back on and start writting, it will
save you new writting in a separate file and not the previous file that you were working on before you took a break.
I found that to avoid this problem I had to press the pause button and it will give 30 minutes before shutting down.
But then I had to do this every thirty minutes - and if I forgort then I am out of luck. It will flash to give you
a one minute warning but I can still miss the warning if I am not looking at it.
I wish they give the user the control of placing the writting in a new file or the previous file.
The most serious problem I found with this product is that there is a "low quality zone" that is more than one inch from the receiver.
In other words, you must start your writting about an inch or more from the receiver. Now the problem is this: the receiver
itself is already an inch in width. So if you place the receiver at the top of the paper and then start writting about an
inch from that. Altogether you lose about two and a half inch of writable space. Then to make the situation even worst, the
receiver does not sense the pen very well near the bottom of the page (about more than an inch). Thus what you have left of the
11 inch standard paper is about less than seven inches of good quality writtable space. This too me is a very annoyance
limitation. Also I find this thing makes my hand writting looks worst than it is. In addition all you can get from this product is
the ability to save your hand writting on the PC in various formats including PDF, and that's about all. You can not edit it.
And there is no on-line writting capability, no tablet mode and so on.
On the positive note, I like the fact that it is truely a stand alone device and it acts like a flash drive once you plug it into the PC.
All the softwares are stored in this receiver/flash drive so you don't have to install any software on your PC. No down loading and
you can read the device with any PC because the softare is stored on the receiver. Also the receiver has respectable amount of
memory space (about 750 MB) so you do not have to imediately down load your hand writting to the PC.
With the sell price that Amazon recently has, I would say it is worth give this product a try. Unfortunately I bought it before it was
on sell, so I had to paid almost twice as much. Three stars are all I can give this one product. It could have been a great product if it has more features. Too bad too since it has such good potential.
Customer Review: get a scanner
Summary: 2 Stars
I don't understand why ppl are spending $90 on this pen. Surely it does what it is supposed to do. But why don't you get yourself a $20(or even free after rebate) scanner which does a much better job in saving your notes electronically? Dane-Elec's software that translates your handwriting into text is a joke. If you have some extra money then this pen is a nice little toy to have. If not, i think a lower-end scanner is a much better choice.Customer Review: Be prepared with a jeweler's screwdriver and to spend money
Summary: 1 Stars
My office ordered 4 of these. ALL FOUR were "Dead on Arrival". Seriously, not one of the 4 worked. I read some online reviews of this and discovered that some were made functional by opening the receiver up and replacing the rechargeable battery. In so doing, we got 3 of the 4 to work. We sent one back because not even a new, freshly charged battery would get it working. I just got the replacement unit - charged it for 24 hours and guess what - it doesn't work either. I find it inexcusable and almost incomprehensible that a company can send out units that flat do not work as advertised when received. Of the units that we DID get to work, they work fine and do what they're supposed to do. The downloadable software has an OCR capable section that is fairly accurate - if you want to use the OCR feature, write large, write clearly - as in 'PRINT' - the OCR won't get handwriting at all and even with printing, I've seen better OCR software. Just to keep handwritten notes is fine. The coverage of the receiver is good from top of the page and from side to side. I have a portfolio that I clip the receiver to at the top - so it's somewhat elevated above the page I'm writing on, I don't know if that makes a difference but I can get a full page of notes if I stay within the prescribed margins of my notebook paper (8.5 x 11) and it's good until the very last line. Again - the unit works well - if you can get it to work initially.Customer Review: Junk! Junk! Junk!
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this product for myself and my wife and eagerly awaited it.
It arrived eventually, and the Receivers will not turn on, even after I stumbled onto the small print that I must charge the receiver for 6 hours, I did that for both mine and my wifes receiver and still nothing!
What a complete dud product, and if you do a web search on these pens you will see that this is not an uncommon problem with no solution, in fact this Z Pen is so bad, I feel like being sick when I think of the money I wasted on this piece of Junk.
I'll never buy ANYTHING from Dane-Elec again!
Customer Review: Very BAD product 2 out of 2 bad
Summary: 1 Stars
I was very interested in having this product but once the first one arrived it did not work, good thing I purchased it via Amazon, I was able to return the same for a replacement which also failed to work (battery never charged). I sent it back and got a refund. Based on other reviews this product seem to be one of very poor quality although the concept of the product is good. If you don't mind waiting for "X" amount of replacements until you get one that works go ahead and buy this item, but I would think that a product that has so many that don't work is a big gamble.