Customer Reviews

C Pen 800C Handheld Scanner

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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!

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..

The C-Pen 800C can scan text at over five inches per second, which alone is more than enough reason to rate it so highly. It fares better than its competitors because of the rechargable batteries, and its single toggle switch. This toggle option gives excellent control of the menus displayed on the LCD screen. Rotating the switch left and right navigates through menu items, which you can then select, giving access to sub-menus.

New features on the C-Pen 800C include improved OCR and the ability to communicate with your PC either by using IR or a serial cable connection.

I love this thing, but I hate its connectivity! Which is mostly either lacking or an immense aggravation. So, be very careful about how you plan to download your data, or you will end up owning a very nice and advanced piece of techno-junk.

Getting the hang of the way to scan with C-Pen takes about an hour's practice, but it is well worth it. At first I couldn't get the C-Pen to read anything and I thought I had just thrown $200+ down the drain. Then I learned a few key things: if you are right handed, scan from right to left---don't worry, the pen will automatically transcribe from left to right. Also, I needed to develop a feel for when the automatic trigger was properly depressed, how to keep the eye flat on the page while moving the pen, and the necessity of making sure the page is flat (something of a bother at time with, for example, fat books.) I still have occasional mishaps, but the edit function makes quick cleanup and re-read easily possible.

The OCR is as good as I get from my HP flatbed and I have absolutely no complaints, reading from a variety of texts ranging from early 19th Century texts to inkjet documents. Like all OCR products, one sometimes gets amusing results. If one is merely taking notes, fine. If one wants clean text, some editing will be required.

But --- oi-v-voi --- the download problem is major. The factory product (I got mine straight from the USA distributor) will not work with Windows XP. The system simply does not recognize the pen's existence. Technical support (Sweden) advised me to download a patch from their website. My desk top twice aborted attempts to download this patch in mid-installation.

Likewise, the C-Pen and my Palm Tungsten C are from different planets and will not connect via infrared. The factory's not very helpful advice was to please be sure that I had the C-Pen oriented in the right direction. Duh-uh! I have no idea what to do about this glitch, which is a major aggravation.

I am saved by the fact that my office operating system is the old Windows 98 and I was able to connect via cable. Throught hat connection I easily and quickly download my scans into Word documents. The downside is that I do most of my work OUT of my office, either at home or elsewhere and it is an incovenience and delay to have to come in here to hook the Pen up.

The bottom line is that --- knowing what I know now --- I probably would not buy this pen unless I were sure I could sucessfully download from it. I was accidentally saved from owning apiece of useless junk.

I'm measuring, first and foremost, ease and precision of scanning. Speed of scanning and ease of installation on the computer are, in my mind, about the same for both the Wizcom QuickLink Elite and the C-Pen 800C. They differ sufficiently, however, in the primary question of ease and quality of scanning. For the record, I bought both at the same time, with the intent of keeping the better of the two. You can just go ahead and buy the C-Pen 800C.
I have had one horrible experience with a pen scanner by Siemens, the "Pocket Reader." It was truly useless. It scanned so poorly that I just put it aside. By the time I though to return it, Siemens was no longer making it, and I couldn't get customer service here in the U.S.
The Wizcom QuickLink Elite is not so bad. It's serviceable. I don't think it lives up to its 95% accuracy guarantee, but perhaps meets a 90% threshold, measured impressionistically. It's interface is also reasonable and satisfactory.
However, the C-Pen 800C is even more precise, truly approaching 95%. Moreover, if you discount errors in spacing from this accuracy percentage, its precision is even higher. Whereas the Wizcom is just as likely to make a content error, misread letters, etc., the 800C's errors are more likely to be the absence of a space when there should be one. A rare missed space doesn't make you puzzle over the text when you come back to it two months later.
C-Pen is also lighter, and it's rechargeable, so while it's more expensive, in the long run, you'll save on batteries.
Both have comparable single-language dictionaries, though Wizcom has more built in or for free (C-Pen allows you one free dictionary, including bilingual ones). Wizcom is a only a bit slower on the uptake, but significantly more likely to warn you "Scan too fast." I've never had that from C-Pen, and again, the precision at any speed is appreciably better with C-Pen.
Both have comparable PC and PDA compatibility capacity.

As a research historian preparing for law school I found the C-Pen 800 invaluable. The only thing better than the pen itself was the customer service and care from the folks at Solutionworks. Especial thanks to Kevin for all the tech support for someone who is a technological barbarian (that would be me!)

The pen itself takes a bit of getting used to. At first I tried scanning very slow and deliberately; this was a mistake. The C-Pen likes a faster scan rate across the page.

Using yellow highlighter actually seemed to help, as did the calibration feature.

I personally preferred using the manual rather than the automatic trigger due to the curviture of the page in thicker books. In the automatic mode if the trigger lost contact with the page part of a word would be broken off. In manual mode I seemed to have greater accuracy. Likewise I found using it without the cord, and then transferring data to be faster. The cord always seemed to be in the way, and at the speed that the C-Pen likes for accurate scanning it was a nuisance.

For someone who needs to extract key pieces of information quickly and conveniently this is a great tool.

Doug

I've used the C-pen 800 for the past week using several different reading media. I usually read technical material. Here is how it went:

- using a soft cover book, the pen had trouble reading text on the left page, especially toward the binding side. I had to break the binding to get the book as flat as possible.
- using a xeroxed article - it does well. It seems to have trouble with more technical words. Even using a very slow deliberate pace, mistakes are often made which will require some editing
- using a somewhat poorly reproduced article (light tones), the cpen was useless.

Having said that, I think there still is a place in my life for the c pen. I download notes I've taken with c pen to either my laptop with the included serial port or my desktop using an infrared to serial accessory (sold separately for 50 bucks). After downloading, it is not too much trouble to edit and store on my hard drive.

I find it convenient to read something, scan it for later note taking. This saves me the step of outlining the text in yellow, going back and typing the notes. So in that regard it does save time. If you can live with the limitations of the cpen, I would give it a try. If you want to scan perfect text and store it on the cpen I wouldn't buy it. Editing on the C pen itself is next to impossible. Also forget about the other features (which I think are useless if you own a pda) such as addresses and dictionary.

I have tried many handheld scanners before and always been little disappointed. Finally C-Pen 800C came and took care of all the worries! In comparison to the others in the market, C-Pen 800C is much smaller. I personally did not care about the new handheld functions (i.e. calendar, contacts, etc...), since I use a Palm device for that purpose; but they certainly are "bonus". The most exciting thing about this product is the accuracy of the OCR. Even with the small font and fast scanning, it does a great job. I am very impressed by the quality, and I recommend this to everyone that has been skeptical with the handheld scanners as I was before :)

The CPEN promises to be an excellent product. If you can get the support and extras needed to make it work. The CPEN comes with an European charger. So, go out and get a US/European adapter in order to charge it. The CPEN does not come with a USB connection cable. It comes with a 9 pin serial cable. So if you do not have a Serial Port, go out and spend $40.00 on a USB-Serial Converter Cable. Wait, not done yet.. If your computer does not have a USB-Serial Controller Driver then you still cannot use the CPEN. Ok, Call Tech Support.. Every time you call you will get answering services asking you to leave your phone number. So, it's a "Don't call us....We'll call you," kinda tech support. Call Customer Service/Sales...THERE! You get an answer, every time. They don't answer with "CPEN USA, May I help you?" They answer the phone like any residential phone line with a simple one time, "Hello?" So, ask if you reached CPEN USA to be sure you did not make a mistake in dialing your number.
I'm sending mine back. Tech support and customer service is key in any delicate, expensive product.

Tony
Fort Lauderdale