Planon Docupen R700 B&W Pen Scanner (DPENR700)
by Planon
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List Price: Our Price: $159.99 You Save: $40.00 (20%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Planon Docupen R700 B&W Pen Scanner (DPENR700)
Customer Review: It Does What It's Supposed To Do Very Well
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been waiting for this product for a long time. Scanner pens only do one or two lines at a time, flatbeds and portable feeders are too bulky for a laptop bag. But this DocuPen is just a little bigger than a pencil and scan-quality of black-and-white text is good. The pen has enough memory for 50 of my 8-1/2x11 text pages; so, I can do all of my scanning without being connected to my PC, then Uploading from the DocuPen via USB port at the end of the day is a snap. The scanning speed is acceptable and you get proficient at it very quickly.Customer Review: Sorry to be a wet blanket
Summary: 2 Stars
Bought it. Tried it. Returned it.
Scanning was very difficult to control and it was too easy to have areas of compression or where the scan is stretched. I would have thought that a well designed device could compensate for variations in scan speed. I may have been able to practice further and get better results, but I probably have less patience than the others extolling this product. On the plus side, the company has at long last delivered on its promise for MacOS X drivers and deserves business for this alone.
What I now use in place of the Docupen is a photocopier (in the library) and and the incomparably useful Fujitsu ScanSnap (in my office). The result is high quality PDFs of paper documents and journal articles unavailable in electronic format. The quality far exceeds what the Docupen can deliver.
Customer Review: Simple and effective -- more useful than you might imagine
Summary: 5 Stars
The DocuPen is great. If you're a road warrior like me and want to have all the comforts of home-office with you when you travel, this is an indispensable tool. It is small and light enough to carry in a portfolio, and makes good-enough scans without difficulty (roughly fax quality).
I like to take meeting notes on paper -- I find that note taking on the laptop isn't versatile enough, and paper is a great free-form medium for diagrams, margin notes and so on. But after a week on the road, I end up with a briefcase full of heavy / disorganized paper. With the DocuPen, I can scan my paper notes, file the electronic copy, and throw away the original paper. This approach also makes it practical to share these notes with others via email, Sharepoint etc. literally as soon as a meeting or call ends.
Other portable scanners are feed-through devices that work for loose leaf paper but not for books and magazines.
Positives -- very small, learned to use well after 2-3 practice scans, holds a charge for a long time, capacity of 50+ scans.
Negatives -- scanned image can be slightly "wobbly" if you don't move the scanner uniformly down the page; needs some kind of mini carrying case more sturdy than the phony leather sleeve that comes with it (I'm looking for a cardboard or plastic tube); the Paper Port software that comes with it is OK but would benefit from a usability workover; it uses a non-standard USB cable so you have to remember to bring it with you / not lose it.
None of these negatives are stoppers. The positives significantly outweigh the negatives. This is my new favorite portable gizmo. If someone would just make an equally portable printer (come on www.printdreams.com, get your stuff to market!), my portable office would be complete!
Customer Review: Works with Mac OS X; might be best for recent texts in Roman letters
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm currently a grad student working on ancient languages, and, after learning that Mac OS X drivers can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website, I bought the DocuPen for research library trips. Though it takes some getting used to, I'm looking forward to getting a lot of mileage out of it. Test runs on texts seem to indicate that it might be best for texts that are not so old, in Roman letters, and/or printed not so small. (See my submitted images of scans for comparison.)Customer Review: Very nice device
Summary: 4 Stars
They call this a "Handheld Pen Scanner". That's not a good description of this excellent device. This product is a handheld PAGE scanner. An IRIS pen is a Handheld Pen Scanner. With an IRIS pen, you scan things on a word by word basis. Basically, you handle an IRIS pen like an outliner. Its very fast, but its also quite tedious if you have to scan more then a few lines of text. With the Docupen, you scan on a page basis. So one swipe of the wand, and you have an entire page. With the IRIS Pen, you need to be connected to a computer via a USB port. The Docupen has 2MBs of flash memory, so your scans are saved right on the device. The latest version of the Docupen includes a rechargeable battery that charges every time you connect it to your computer through the USB cable.
I have seen some reviews complaining about the scanning quality of the Docupen. I think the scanning quality is quite good for a hand feed scanning device. The Docupen allows you to scan at two resolution levels. The higher resolution level provides better OCR performance. I use a different OCR program then the one provided with Docupen, and I have had very few problems even at low resolution scan levels. I have seen some complaints about the OCR performance from this device. However, based on my experiences, I suspect a good part of those problems concerns the quality of the OCR package being used. If you can live without OCR, the low resolution rate is more then sufficient. In this mode, you save your images in a data base like End Note or File Maker, and they are available for reading.
HINTS: when you use the device, scan the page across the shortest distance. So scan across pages, not down pages. Also start the scan on the part of the page with the most white space. Don't scan from the binding out, scan from the outside in.
All is not perfect with this device. The interface with the computer is clumsy. I am on a MAC so I expect an easer to use interface (YES IT WORKS ON AN OSX MAC!). The major part of the problem concerns the auto power off feature. Its set so fast, that its difficult to turn the device on, and then move your hand over to the PC to initiate the image captures. This is silly on the R700 model because the device is being recharged as soon as you connect it to the USB port so there is no need to conserve power when power is coming down the USB cable.
The wand had 2 MB of flash memory. That's fine for occasional scan use, but for researchers, 2MB is not enough. I would like to see the flash memory bumped up to one or two GB. I would also like to see Bluetooth on the device to eliminate the need for cables. I can always plug the device in to a recharger at the end of the day.
I think they should also consider building a wider wand that would allow the use of a display on the device that shows what was just scanned. That way, you would know that you got what you needed. I don't want to fuss with a computer while I am in the library. Finally, I would like to see the capture rate increased. Faster capture rates would make the device less fussy about the speed you move the wand across the page.
All in all, I am quite pleased with this device. I am looking forward to the next generation of this product.