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Wizcom QuickLink SuperPen | List Price: $199.99
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Brand: Wizcom
Binding: Electronics
Features: - Fully portable hand-held scanner
- Scans full lines of text in 8 languages
- Stores up to 1,000 pages of text
- Memory upgrades and language dictionaries available
- Expandable with Quicktionary II translation capability
Great product for researchers [Posted on 2003-08-28]
I purchased this product because I read and pull citations from many scientific articles and texts and put them in a bibliographic citation database.
The WizCom SuperPen definitely has a learning curve, but I found it to be short. I estimate that I'm getting approximately 98% accuracy now scanning articles with very unusual word content (paleoclimatology). This rivals the accuracy when I type these same references and is much quicker.
The SuperPen makes some demands on the user.
1. The pen must be held at a fairly steep angle to the page; 80 to 90 degrees seems to work best.
2. Accuracy seems to increase if you switch to left-handed mode so that the scanner head is looking into the upcoming text
3. A constant speed seems to work best, but there is little difference between given speeds.
4. The user must develop a consistent method of moving the scanner parallel to the lines of text. The largest error rate occurs when the scanner head is skewed or the path of the device is at an angle to the line of text.
I did discover one little idosyncracy. When the system is powered on, it tries to open the last file which you were editing. If that file is very large, the pen times out before the file is loaded. That behavior can be by-passed by holding down the Escape button as the power is turned on, thereby activating the main menu. At that point, go to the option which permits a longer time-out period and set it to some higher number. That is the only real problem which I have had so far.
poor technical support [Posted on 2003-10-23]
I bought the pen because I wanted to capture references and quotations from books and articles. Unfortunately, I was not able to get the pen to communicate with the PC. The tech support person (who claimed to be the only one in Canada and North America) was reluctantly helpful. He helped me figure out the basic settings on the baud rate and the COM ports. But could not help in figuring out why the PC is not connecting to the pen. His suggestion was to re-install Windows! The conflict of new hardware with the the COM ports is a common occurrence. If this is the case, I'm not sure why Wizcom has not created an online helpfile. If you happen to get an error message and do not know out how to resolve (hardware) conflicts on your COM port, this pen will be worthless. The scanning is also difficult and requires practice. I am disappointed that the pen didn't work for me.
Useful for grad school and anyone who reads a lot. [Posted on 2003-11-01]
This scanner is convenient for those who need to remember large amounts of information. You can use it in place of taking notes while reading textbooks. Also, if you want to copy short passages, it can be quicker than just photocopying the whole page. One of the most helpful features is that you can beam scanned notes to your computer or organizer. There is a learning curve, so you will need to spend some time to be able to get accurate scans. I have not tried out the foreign language dictionaries, but it seems like these could potentially be a big help with translation.
Expensive toy [Posted on 2004-05-21]
I bought this pen to be used as a dictionary (it can translate from English to any language in principle). The pen works; I haven't got any technical problems. Its OCR is not bad. However, the price is way too much (I paid $150). Perhaps, most important of all, I didn't find the pen very appropriate for use as a dictionary. For example, while reading a book, for every new word (which usually doesn't come frequently) the pen needs to be turned on (takes 3-4 seconds), and then the word needs to be scanned (this you have to do slowly and carefully, and several times in case the OCR doesn't work). Overall, I found out that scanning significantly slows down reading. Perhaps, superpen is faster than looking up words in a dictionary, but not much faster. I didn't like its dictionary software much either (not all dictionaries are of same quality!); I tried english-english and english-turkish dictionaries. Recently, I saw an electronic dictionary (the ones with a small keyboard on it) for $45. Probably, that would have been a better choice than superpen if you only need a portable dictionary.
Superpen = super nice [Posted on 2006-08-11]
Once receiving my pen, I spent at least 1 hour getting acquainted with it, the manual and its functions. I highly suggest spending at least some time with it so that you are comfortable with it before putting it to actual use. For me, I found that scanning from right to left was best and just got a kind of familiarity with the device. I found the pen to have over the 95% accuracy suggested by Wizcom after I had spent a little time with it.
However, it did not connect to my computer. I contacted tech support and found that he was extremely quick to respond, even after 6pm. I was very impressed. I had a few problems to be sorted out, but the most frustrating one was that I had not clicked on "turn the pen communications on." He never thought of it, and I happened to stumble across it. So if you have issues, check that every time you start the software. Now, everything works wonderfully.
In addition, I bought this pen because I have a significant learning disability and it takes me a very long time to both read and take notes. I find that this pen truly speeds up the process and makes my life a lot easier.
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