Planon DocuPen Pen-Sized Full Page Scanner (DPEN-BW)

List Price: $199.99

Features:

• Scans a full 8-inch page
• Stores up to 100 pages in internal memory
• 200 dpi maximum resolution
• 4 to 8 seconds per page scanning speed
• USB and serial interfaces

Accessories:

Belkin F3U133-06 Pro Series Hi-Speed USB Cable (Six-Feet)

Customer Reviews:

Only Connect - Not a Chance [Posted on 2004-06-11]
I bought this product with very high expectations. Silly me. No matter how many tries, no matter how much advice and valiant effort from technical support, no matter how many work arounds attempted, my computer and the scanner could not connect; i.e. the USB connection did not work. Shortly after I finally gave up, I installed a new digital camera, also calling for an USB connection (natch) with no problems at all. My suspicion is that the scanner is not at all comfortable with XP, which is on my system. But whatever the reason, the scanner failed to install, I returned the product for a credit, and commented to the technical support that "It simply shouldn't be this hard."

This product works great for Me [Posted on 2004-06-19]
I recently purchased the DocuPen and the product has been fine for me. It connected perfectly fine with Windows XP and to my other computer systems such as Win 98 and Win 2000.

For some people I know that if a product does not work, it may be in part due to something in the computer system itself. Take a look into the system first to see if its compatible with the product, because the product worked wonders for me.

The DocuPen literally took me like 3 scans to get the technique down. And I get very legible scans.

It seems that many expect pure carbon copy duplicates, but that's not really the concept behind the DocuPen, because I really see it as a tool to scan documents and other materials for reference that does not need to be super high quality. If need be, then use a high resolution flatbed scanner. The key difference is in the fact that it is totally portable, something that a flatbed scanner is not.

The free software is also amazing, its called PaperPort from ScanSoft that integrates with various programs from my computer like Outlook, Word, etc...I am also impressed with the OCR feature within PaperPort because it does a very good translation of scanned text image into editable text.

By the way, the technical support staff is superb in assisting with technical needs, because I only had a slight issue but was resolved immediately.

Scanning Needs Satisfied [Posted on 2004-06-19]
The DocuPen has been very effecient tool for me. I scan lots of receipts and forms and various other financial documents, something that is important to me at times is capturing signatures, which the DocuPen is capable of.

I have used up the one set of batteries already and basically I scanned up to 220 pages which is 20 more pages than what the manual recommends.

The time wasted on driving around to find a photocopying machine or flatbed scanner and actually doing the photocopy can now be eliminated with the DocuPen. Just take the DocuPen and capture your required document on the spot.

Also getting the scanning technique down was not hard at all, as I got the technique down after 5 trial scans on a regular Word file print out. What I like about the DocuPen is that we are actually a part of the scanning mechanism, a really cool idea & concept.

Very hard to use; terrible OCR capability [Posted on 2004-07-30]
I was really looking forward to getting my Docupen. I sold my Wizcom Quicklink in anticipation. What a disappoinment. If this product worked well it would be fantastic. The size and weight is really great.

Main problem is that it is really hard to get decent scans. After a few hours I was getting about 1 in 3 usable (with 2 out of 3 failing before the page was done). The problem appears to be getting the rollers to turn consistently. They are quite stiff, and the moment they stop turning - which can easily happen - the scanner assumes the page is done. There is no way to delete the last scan using the device itself; you have to attach it to the PC for that. So even though you know you've just done a bad scan which is eating up the memory, you can't delete it. Presumably with time scanning would get easier, but this inability to delete a known bad last scan seems a serious shortcoming to me given how many scans end up being bad.

Even if you get a "good" scan (which with this device at 200dpi b/w is far from great), the OCR software (PaperPort) is appalling. It is totally incapable of making sense of multi-column text like magazines, it seems, and repeated everything several times in one big mess. In frustration I installed an old copy of OmniPage Pro, which despite being about 4 or more years old, did a much better (but still not satisfactory) job. As I want this scanner almost entirely for OCR applications, it fails to meet my needs and it is going to be returned.

Getting Good Scans [Posted on 2004-08-02]
I recently got my DocuPen. I was extremely impressed with it. It clearly outshines any of those line-by-line scanners such as Wizcom, C-Pen, etc.

The technology is simply mind boggling, the way they cram all that impressive technology into one small pen-shaped like device.

I was impressed with the scan quality of the device as well, considering that its a small pen-shaped device. The sample scans on the DocuPen homepage is truly an indication of the quality of an attainable scan. I scan mostly documents, bank statements, deeds, receipts etc. In fact all of those scans of those documents all turned out good, as good as the quality indicated on the site.

As for the OCR feature, the OCR was decent. OCR basically onverts your text based document scans into editable text, but then again OCR was never a good or perfect technology. In fact the DocuPen never really promoted the OCR feature from my recollection. I have a high-res flatbed scanner, and when I used the OCR feature, I still get errors from the conversion and that's from a hi-res flatbed scanner.

I love how light weight it is and how portable it is. Truly a tool for road warriors.

I am also looking out for Planon's future DocuPen version which I hear is sometime soon.

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