Customer Reviews

IRIS Pen Express Handheld Scanner

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've been using the IRISpen express for about 5 days now. I went into the purchase with my eyes open. I'd read the reviews on Amazon and knew that the opinions and experiences were polarized. However, with a major research project in the works I needed every bit of help I could get. So I decided to take the plunge and purchase the IRISpen from Compusa.

So far I am pleased, though the scanner is not without its deficiencies. It does a good job scanning in text, however there are limitations, but these can be worked around, and are understandable. Below are some of the problems as well as a few of the positive things I've found.

1. The scanner's OCR software cannot recognize writing that has been underlined by hand. This is understandable because, at least for me, these lines aren't straight and can intersect the letters, this will throw off the scanner. However, I haven't found this to be the biggest problem/

2. Despite the claims of the manufacturer the scanner does not always scan at 100% accuracy. Over all the accuracy is about 95% which is good enough for me, but not all letters come out.

3. Too much light can inhibit the scanning process. I learned this when sitting at Barnes and Nobles by a window. To much light dilutes the emissions of the scanner and the scanner does not have enough contrast, which is created by the green light emitted by the pen, to read and recognize the letter.

4. You need to be move your hand in a relatively straight line. When you look at the tip of the pen you see three lines, two at the ends and one in the middle. In order to effectively scan you need to line up the middle mark with the center of the line of text you want to scan. If you move in a line that is pretty straight the scanner will scan very well, however if you let your hand waver to much you will get gibberish. I see this as an understandable result, if your hand moves too much you'll get a line of letters that the OCR can't recognize.

5. It takes a little practice to get used to the scanning process.

6. If you are scanning from a photocopy and the copy isn't moderately clear then you won't get a good scan. Also understandable as I see it, the letters aren't complete and the OCR software isn't strong enough to recognize these letters.

7. Foreign letters. When the output language is set to English the scanner will not register letters with accents, such as `é'. This is one of the few bigger complaints that I have, but, it's not huge.

8. You can't scan too fast. If you move the scanner too fast then you won't read all the letters, you don't need to go slow but you also can't go too fast. This just takes a little practice.

9. The double click feature on the pen buttons is a little clumsy, but the buttons, are customizable to allow you to chose any keyboard command you want.

10. The scanner recognizes hyphenated words. If a word at the end of a line has a hyphen, and continues on the next line, the scanner recognizes that this is a partial word and combines it with the other part of the word on the next line.

11. My biggest complaint is that the pen software does not automatically load when you plug the scanner into your USB port. This is easily fixed with an icon on your desktop or toolbar but I've found it annoying.

12. The scanner must be used with the book or magazine on a hard surface. Otherwise the text will flex and corrupt your scan.

13. The size of the scanner sometimes means that you must hold your books at a 90 degree angle if you intend to scan to the end of a line.

14. Sometimes it does not scan well when going over a curve in a page. 85% of the time it works fine, but the other 15% you may get some corruption in your scan.

Overall I've found the IRISpen express to be a useful tool. I would recommend it, but I would also note that there are caveats to its effective use, it takes some practice to use. However, it does work well, and I expect it to be an invaluable tool for academic research. I recommend it.

The iris pen scanner says that it needs a USB port and CD drive. Unfortunately, they failed to mention that most USB drives do not have enough power to run the Iris pen's scanner. I tried 2 computers and called technical support 3 times. Each time it was the same story... not enough power. I told them that I had a brand new, expensive computer with only 2 other USB devices hooked up and he still said it wasn't enough. Anyway, I had to return mine and I would highly suggest looking for another product because the Iris Pen Scanner does not live up to its claims.

I received the IRIS Pen Express a day ago, installed the software and the pen and started using it right away. I am pleased with the pen scanner. It works as represented and is quite simple to use. I wanted the pen scanner for small scanning jobs out of books etc (I practice law and will use the product in legal research and writing projects). For larger jobs, I will continue use a flat-bed scanner.

The IRIS pen is fast and amazingly accurate right out of the box. I carefully considered competing pens and decided to go with IRIS--so I have no experience with QuickLink or other competitors.

I think the reviews which are very tough on the IRIS Pen are unwarranted. The IRIS Pen is a very good product. I'm rating this a 4 out of 5 stars but it may be a 4.5 (and nothing is a 5).

I too read the reviews and took the risk; and I too, am sorry I did. My pen will be back on it's way tomorrow for a semi-refund. I was extremely disappointed with the IRIS Pen Express. Not only can you NOT scan text that is single spaced, but when you do, it suddenly creates a new language that resembles something like a child who just came up and started punching keys on the keyboard. You can use a piece of paper to cover the next line down, but I still got errors. Scanning is not new to me either, nor are electronics in general. I work with them for a living, so I am confident the error is on the half of IRIS Pen. I gave myself an easy two hours trying to train myself to holding it right, etc. No luck. Speaking of which, it's also hard to hold the pen at exactly the right angle... it won't work right if you don't. You also have to scan in a perfectly straight line almost; easier said than done, trust me. I was using the pen on a desk, on a flat surface... I even used their "test sheet" and couldn't get it to input the right words more than 50% of the time... it was just gibberish. It takes longer to correct the mistakes in the middle of a sentence than it does to type the whole thing out. The application does input data directly to Word as promised... but data doesn't mean "correct data"... it just sorta puts in whatever it thinks you scanned. I would guess my overall accuracy rate was not better than 40-50%.

This is actually my first real negative review. I took a risk, and I payed the price. I should have listened to the other reviews here. Hopefully I along with some of these other folks will spare you the trouble of this device. Don't waste your time or money. You can buy a larger scanner, and scan faster with OCR, or heck, even type, that use this device successfully. Hopefully they'll eventually produce a more accurate product.

First, upon installation you're warned that the product has not passed Windows Logo Review, so even though it says "Supports Windows XP" on the box, you're cautioned that the software may destabalize your system.

Second, unless the text you're scanning is triple-spaced, it's pretty much useless. It scans one line at a time, so after calibrating the proper line and fixing OCR errors, you may as well have typed it yourself.

Third, if you're buying one from CompUSA, DON'T. Three words: 15% restocking fee.

I used the IRIS Pen to scan all the printed text-media I gathered from work last year (about 300 pages of valuable data), in order to put it on a CD rather than having it in form of a huge pile of paper...it took me only 3days! Typing all of that information myself would have been a task unable to finish without this product.

Before I purchased an IRISPen EXPRESS scanner, I had read through customer reviews on amazon.com and got confused by so differing rates for IRISPen Express (very low) and for IRIS II Executive scanner (high). As some reviewer pointed out, IRIS II Executive scanner is the same as IRIS II standard in hardware with only difference in software. I needed only standard feature, so IRIS II standard was likely to be the one that suits for me. By contacting the company I got to learn that the IRISPen EXPRESS is, in fact, a newer version than IRIS Pen II. I thought that newer version is usually better than older version. Since I used it, I have found that I was right; IRISPen EXPRESS works just as reviewed for IRISPen II. I do not understand why IRISPen EXPRESS should deserve such a low rate whereas this is supposed to be equal or even better than IRISPen II. All the tips that I collected from the extensive reviews of IRISPen II section were equally helpful for me in using my IRISPen EXPRESS. For instance, one reviewer below mentions a problem of the light coming in & out during scan. After I learned from other reviews in the IRISPen II section, I do not use any buttons at all, and use it with other application. I just put the pen at the beginning of the line at correct tile angle (see manual), then the green light comes in automatically and I scan the whole line and lift at the end of the line, then the text goes into the application nicely. The light should be on all the way during scan, otherwise it means that the pen is not in correct position to see that part of the text (when the light is out). I made this type mistakes at first, but now I manage to do it. As in someone else's tip, it helps if the page is laid flat. One tip I can add (as non-expert) is that I try to move the pen slowly (still much faster than typing) to get better results. This helps improving accuracy of my hand motion, while the scanner itself might be more capable. Another reviewer in this session mentioned that the text must be triple-spaced. I don't think so. I usually pick up only one line near the center of scanner regardless of the line spacing. I give five stars, since this device works almost perfectly for my purpose. It does require some exercises and tips, but it'll be common for any handheld scanners.

Before I purchased this product, I read the Amazon reviews. There were fewer of them than now, but the opinions were just as polarized. Based on the content of the reviews, I decided that the product was probably OK and that the problems resulted from a lack of technical skill on the part of the users. Wrong.

All I've been able to wring out of the IRIS pen is two lines of text printed at about one character per second followed immediately by a system crash.

I emailed for tech support. Silly me.

IRIS tech support does not exist. My first email went unanswered; my second got a reply that said they were having trouble with their email server, so try again later. Weeks later my third try produced an error message indicating email could not be delivered to the listed address.

Something else they don't tell you is the pen only works off a POWERED USB port. Plug it into your keyboard or piggyback it off a port extender and you get nothing. In my case, I had no extra ports and had to buy a $20 powered hub, only to produce the shoddy results reported above.

IRIS is quite good, however, at flooding your email with ads for more of their schlocky products.

The IRIS Pen may possibly work if you somehow fortuitously have the necessary configuration of hardware, memory, and operating system already in existence. If you don't, IRIS won't be there to tell you what that magic combination is or to help you get the pen to function.

Initially I wanted to kill myself, this thing had a 80% failure rate on all words scanned.. After getting the hang of holding it properly (the guide wheel must be completely flat against the paper) the failure rate dropped to about 15%-5% of the words scanned.

It will almost always mess up when you are scanning the left side of a book and you reach the binding, and you must move it at a medium speed (to fast and all you get is gibberish)

After reading the website it looks like the IRISPen Executive software would produce better results, and they want $99 bucks for an upgrade (anyone know if it is that much better?) $250 total is a bit heafty.

I hoped to get a little better performance from a software update, but when I finally managed to find something on their site dated 5/2004 it turned out to be the same revision I was running but these files real dates where a little older (one was 3/2004 not so bad but the other was 8/2003 egh that seems pretty old for an update).

Anyway hold on to your software disk very tightly because I don't think you can just download the software again if you loose it.

Other small problems my pens buttons don't always work, you can't assign any key to it (I needed backspace). And when it doesn't scan things in right it can be a pain in the butt to correct it.

Also my pen lost communication a few times and I had to unplug and replug it in to get it working again.

Overall it was worth the price (even though I overpaid by $30 #$*

This really is a great tool. I scan so many things from so many sources a regular scanner + OCR would be too cumbersome. I use it wherever I go, when I work at a friend's place, library, my parent's. I tried the portable one but they are way too slow for me and all I did was to delay working on projects...not good. Without the IRISPen Express, I would have to retype by hand. I definitely found the best alternative.

Could not afford the Executive version but it sounds pretty cool to have the voice read back. The accuracy is identical to the Express and the Express is less expensive.

Great stuff! Every students should have one.