Customer Reviews

Ectaco C-Pen 20 Handheld Scanner

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

As a scholar who works with books and other printed sources a lot, I have long been on the lookout for an easy way to scan text into my laptop. I've tried using both flatbed scanners and digital cameras for this purpose, but I've found both to be awkward and time-consuming. That's why I was pleased to discover the C-Pen 20 - it's not perfect, but it does the job quicker and more easily than any of the alternatives.

PROS:

- It's easy to use; you just press the pointer to the page and a light comes on to let you know that the sensor is active. You then sweep the C-Pen from left to right at moderate speed as if it were a highlighter, and it converts the text on the page into electronic characters on your computer.
- The text instantly appears wherever the cursor on your screen is located, so you can use this device with just about any Windows program (e.g., Word, Access, etc.).
- The recognition rate is higher than I thought it would be; it's better than 99% on book-sized text. In practical terms, this means that you'll get one or two errors on average per paragraph, but these flaws are easily corrected (particularly if your spell checker highlights them for you automatically).
- It's small and easily portable, so you can take it with you to libraries and archives with a laptop.

CONS:
- The character recognition is sometimes thrown off by underlining and other marks on the page.
- You must use it with a PC or laptop that has a USB port (it doesn't run on batteries like some scanning pens).
- Even though it recognizes just about every major language written in Latin, Cyrillic, or Greek letters, it can't handle older typefaces (like German Fraktur). It also has trouble recognizing some symbols (such as footnotes).
- You have to scan each line of text one at a time, so it's not necessarily the best solution if you need to copy many pages of text.

The bottom line is that the C-Pen 20 has been an excellent investment for me, and I recommend it to anyone who's looking for an easy way to transfer printed text into an electronic medium.

UPDATE (2011):

I wrote this review almost five years ago. I continue to think highly of this product - despite the occasional error, I'm still amazed at how accurately it reads text most of the time. I only have two caveats to add:

1) The original grey and beige C-Pen 20 doesn't work with newer 64-bit versions of Windows, only 32-bit ones. This is tricky - if you bought your PC or laptop in the past two years or so, you may be running a 64-bit version of Windows without realizing it (they both look the same to a non-technical user). You can check which version you have by going to Control Panel and selecting "System" - it should say "32-bit" or "64-bit" under "System Type." If you have a 64-bit copy of Windows, you'll need to buy the newer C-Pen 3.0 or 3.5, or else see if you can find a black C-Pen 20 (which is also 64-bit compatible).

2) Digital cameras and OCR (optical character recognition) technology have improved dramatically over the past few years. If you need to scan multiple pages of text into electronic form, a digital camera and a good software program (Finereader or Omnipage) might be a better alternative. For saving snippets of text, however, the C-Pen continues to be the best solution.

I am a bit of a scanning pen fanatic. I write papers and use them to collect research data. That is why I was excited to see that C-Pen (the best scanning pen manufacturer) had come out with a new model (the first in several years). My expectation was that this model would be far better than the C10 (the previous USB scanner) given the advance in technology since its release. I was pretty disappointed overall. This model is no quicker than the C10 and no more accurate. The software does not do as good a job as the C10 and it is not uncommon to have the pen miss an entire line of text. This is particularly important since I am often scanning very rapidly and don't take time to look up at the screen to see that the text is entered correctly.
Overall, not as good as the C10 (which I would give 4 stars), but better than the Iris Pen Executive (2 stars).
Please also note that this pen does not work with Mac computers (the only USB pen that does is the Iris Pen).

I feel completely compelled to write this review for the C-Pen 20. It far exceeds my expectation. I am a graduate student, working on a doctorate at Harvard University. It is a tool, or better yet, a weapon that has reduced my time tremendously. I wish I had it while going through my master's program.

I would say that it is about 90% accurate right out of the box without any training. I have had it about 3 weeks now, and with improved technique, I have increased its accuracy to about 95% - 97%. I have found it helpful to always perform the stroke left - right. It is easier for 2 reason, 1) that is the way humans read and 2) you don't have to readjust the position of your hand.

I would recommend it to anyone who has to do research, or persons who are in a profession where previous documentation is necessary.

I am a money manager in NYC. I probably read over 150 pages of research everyday. In order for me to track ideas and not forget things it is important for me to have some sort of method to organize this information overload. My first purchase was the IRIS Executive pen. It did a horrible job of converting written text into MS WORD, the error rate was over 50% and made the task of cleaning it up twice what it would of been if I just decided to type it. I returned it within 5 days. I went ahead and purchased the C-PEN (with a return policy). What a Difference! I can run through 100 pages of research and condense it into 2 pages with minimal errors. Not only does it create legible conversion (over 90%) but once you lift the pen it creates a space for you..(no need to hit a button on pen) This is probably the only one that should be invested in, they have the idea and technology down pat. C-PEN has made my life easier!

in a general sense, this c-pen seems OK, but:

- there shouldn't be too much light (this is a problem especially at night time, i.e. under a bulb)
- you shouldn't expect too much accuracy; i'm using it for Turkish texts and the overall accuracy is around 80%.
- quality of the book also effects the result
- tables and figures can't be scanned, of course
- and finally, you've to be connected to your computer during operation.

Yet, i'm happy with this thing. It reduces the labour necessary to extract large amounts of text. Could be useful especially for PhD students.

The C-pen did not work with Window Vista. I called customer services and they were not of any help. When I was using it in Window Vista, files from other programs started popping out.

I was disappointed until I started using it on Window XP. This product did a good job. I am a researcher and I have to do a lot of reading. Before buying the product, it was hard for me to retype important stuff into the MS word. However, with this product, the problem just vanished. All I have to do is to read, mark important lines, and then scan it for future reference.

When you scan, make sure that the text is not highlighted and the central vertical line (marker) must cut the center of the word you want to scan.

Speed is not an issue. The pen never puts you down as far as speed is concerned.

I would encourge C-pen team to look into the problem I faced so that C-pen can be excellent in its field.

I am very, very pleased with this product. I took a chance based on other reviews I read on Amazon and I could not be more pleased. I have stacks and stack of magazines that I take content from. It was so tedious using a flat scanner because it would scan the entire page as an image, then I had to use an OCR program to get the text out. Another problem I had was the fact that most of my articles are printed in newspaper-style colums, and my OCR program could not maintain that format, so all the text would just be jumbled and I'd spend an eternity moving text around. The CPen has been a lifesaver for me, because now I can scan the text I need and it goes right into Wordpad. What's really nice is I can scan pretty fast and the accuracy is exceptionally good, though probably not as accurate as they claim. I think they claim 99% accuracy and I would give it a solid 95% which is more than good enough for me. I was impressed with the wide range of font sizes it can scan. I'm never gonna give mine up. In fact, it actually makes me want to work now, when I used to dread the whole process. Installation is simple, even for idiots like me. The price was very good too. Bottom line, this serves me quite well. I have no complaints at all.

Got my C-pen recently, and already have transferred so much text from books into my computer. It's a wonderful device with very well worked out software to ensure seamless operation. I would never need my flatbed scanner and OCR for scanning texts anymore, which is quite an unwieldy operation most of the time. Hope this product doesn't get discontinued anytime soon. I hope to be using it for a long time.

I have been using my C-Pen 20 for 2 weeks now, and I tell you, it's a life saver. Being a postgraduate student and not a fast typist, the C-Pen saved me a LOT of time.. I really wish I had bought it earlier.

I noticed a few things:
- The quality of the printed text (that you want to scan) affects the accuracy of the pen.
- The slower you scan, the higher the accuracy results you get. This especially helps if the quality of the print isn't very good or if the text is very small. Otherwise, you can scan away very fast with very good results.
- Hold your pen straight for better results
- If you hi-lite the text before scanning it, be sure to use a light colour (e.g, yellow) because darker colours (e.g., blue) affect the accuracy (I was using a dark blue and got an accuracy of 15% only!!)

Overall, the pen is very handy. It's accuracy is around 92%, but I'm only a new user and generally the results improve with time.

A great tool in my opinion. Much better when compared to all the other pens in the market. Really saves a lot of time and money. Although there are a few mistakes in reading text, once the pen goes through the learning phase, these minor errors can be resolved. Overall, I give a 5/5 for this pen...go ahead and order one for yourself...