C Pen 800C Handheld Scanner

by C-pen

Product Details

Product Manual [853kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00005BC0H
• Item model number: DC051078
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1973

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Students, researchers, and professionals who value the convenience and plentiful features of the C Pen will appreciate the expanded memory, rechargeable battery, and crisp display in the 800C. This study and business tool, which is nearly as small and light as a standard highlighter, speeds your efforts to gather research information.

Use it to capture text from any printed source; it can store up to 3,000 pages of printed text and PC files. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, with 215,000 definitions and translations, is integrated as a standard feature, and you can download up to 11 different language dictionaries from the manufacturer. The 800C is also equipped to receive text messages, and the display can show six crisp lines of text at a time.

The C Pen 800 is Windows compatible and interacts with PDAs made by Palm, Visor or Sony. You can transfer information via infrared port or serial cable, and the C Pen is designed for left- or right-handed users. A serial cable is included, as is a one-year warranty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect note taker with a few flaws, November 26, 2001

By 

Kevin R Hoyt (Parker, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C Pen 800C Handheld Scanner (Office Product)

As a graduate student, I am constantly reading. Each week it seems that there are endless chapters of textbook material, and only a very finite amount of time to digest it all. This is compounded by the fact that I am constantly traveling for business, and regularly work fourteen-hour days. So what I needed was a way to read the material once, and move on. I don't have the time to go through the text once with a yellow highlighter and then follow it up a few days later to review what I thought was important. In reading one of those magazines that the airlines put in the "seat pocket in front of you" I saw an ad for the C Pen, and I was sold.

There are several benefits to the C Pen including size, durability, accuracy, and efficiency.

The size is a little larger than three regular pens in a tight bundle. It does take a little getting used to, but I found myself merrily scanning in no time flat. While it feels very light, and is made mostly of plastic, the C Pen is surprisingly durable. I also believe that if the C Pen was made of anything heavier then your hand would get tired very quickly. The bundle I bought included a case for the C Pen with convenient Velcro latch. It seems like it could break easily, but I've had a few spills and mine keeps scanning.

The accuracy of the device is pretty amazing. It can scan up to five inches of text per second, and for the most part will only mess up on occasion. I've found that larger font sizes tend to give it more problems, as well as fonts that are sans serif. Even single-line mathematical formulas were no problem for the C Pen.

The 800C model includes a built in rechargeable battery that is well worth the extra cash. It takes about an hour and a half to fully charge the battery, and it will merrily scan for countless hours. In my experience, I've found that I can scan for about eight hours before needing to recharge the C Pen. As well, in terms of efficiency, the IR capability works like a charm. I can tell the C Pen that I want to beam the last chapter of content to my Palm, and a few seconds later I'm done. This is a great little feature.

I was curious about how much data the C Pen would actually store, and I have yet to hit my limit. I started off scanning very lightly; only where I thought it was necessary in order to save memory. As time progressed and I saw the memory I had left I started scanning even more. I have scanned in seven chapters of notes in a very large and long-winded Economics book, and I still have more space than I know what to do with.

Unfortunately, some of the C Pen's pluses also make for its minuses. Perhaps my biggest complaint with the C Pen is that it is so precise. When scanning a line of text, I've found it better to just scan the entire line, even if the sentence I'm after stops half way through. It's very hard to scan anything other than an entire line without spillover into the next sentence. The C Pen includes all sorts of additional applications that potentially give it PDA functionality - but let's get real; you're not going to use the C Pen as an all in one PDA. Don't charge me for applications I'll probably never use - especially if you're going to include IR connectivity to my Palm device anyways.

As well, when I beam content to my Palm, I cannot edit it on the Palm. The content must be transferred to my computer first. This seems a little limiting, and I'm not sure why C Tech decided to put this in place. You can use the C Pen as a pen (C Write), and it will recognize what you are writing assuming that you are sticking to their character script. This is very similar to what most Palm users will be used to, but it's not the same Graffiti strokes, which means you'll have to learn two sets. Likewise, if you scanned content with errors, and you want to correct it using the C Write feature, you'll have to navigate several menus to get there, making this a time consuming task.

So if you're looking for a fancy new digital way to scan content, this is a great tool - though it has some problems in terms of usability, but it does what it's supposed to, which is scan in text.

56 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The people at C-Pen do not exagerate!, November 27, 2001

By 

Javier Escobar (Envigado, Ant, Colombia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C Pen 800C Handheld Scanner (Office Product)

When the people at C-Pen say their product is "a stroke of genius" they do not exagerate. Since I bought my C-Pen 800C a couple of months ago, it has become a permanent companion in my academic activity. Two of its functions are particularly impressive, namely "Notes" (the scanner) and "C-Dictionary". Once you get the hang of it, "C-Write" is also very good (though I would have preferred it if they had adopted the Palm graffiti alphabet, so as not to make palm users like myself spend extra time learning the new alphabet). Of special interest for academic use is the possibility of storing the notes you have taken in different files and folders, thereby helping you organize the information gathered.

The precision of C-Pen 800C's OCR is excellent, not only when reading texts written in English, but also in other languages (though I must concede that my experience has been reduced to texts in Spanish, German and French).

Synchronization with the PC is very easy and the use of C-Direct, by means of which we can scan a text directly into the computer, is easy and precise. As for the remaining utilities (address book, calender, etc.) I have nothing to say, since I have not tried to use them.

To wrap up, I simply want to say that this is a great instrument for academic use. Once you've learned to use it you won't understand how in the world you could ever have done research without it in the past!

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An incredible product!, May 30, 2001

By 

alexpt (Springfield, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C Pen 800C Handheld Scanner (Office Product)

I am a graduate student and as such spend endless hours reading academic journals and having to type up references for my papers. Also, often I find an article that I only need a few key points from, or that the article is worthless but there is one reference worth retrieving.. This hand held OCR seemed perfect for my uses.

I first bought the QuickLink Pen by WizCom. It is a good product, but the accuracy was dissapointing on the very small fonts that the reference lists are usually in. I returned it with hopes that the new revision (C-pen 800 *c*) would live up to the promise of better OCR. I don't care too much about the PDA type features, those are only bonuses for me. The main thing I wanted was accurate OCR.

It really blew away the QuickLink in this department, as well as ease of use (the c-pen is more intuitive). I can scan the very smallest print (I assume 5 point, which is the smallest this or as far as I know any pen can read). But where the quicklink pen gave me many errors, the 800c works much better. Of course, none of these are flawless. But from my experience with two different pens, the C-pen 800c is much better for OCR, particularly with small fonts! It is also a little smaller, has rechargable batteries, and matches the quicklink now with serial and IR connections. I am VERY happy with the c-pen, and if you pull bits and pieces or references often, it can save a LOT of time! Very impressed..