Customer Reviews

IRIS Pen II Executive Scanner

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I did a lot of due diligence before buying the IRIS Pen II Executive Scanner, including all the other pen scanner products on the market. I was initially a little put off by the fact you had to attach it to a computer via a USB cable to work. FWIW, I am using it with MacOS X 10.2.6 and a iBook.

I have had it for over a month now, purchased in July 2003, and I LIKE it. I have primarily used it to scan text from photocopies of journal articles. These are clearly not the highest quality text material from which to scan, but nevertheless, the IRIS pen handles them acceptably. By that, I mean, I get around 85% accuracy. This clearly means, I have to go back and retype things, but still, I am able to capture large quanities of text to use *in a very rapid fashion*. Like one of the previous posters, I do tend to use it like a highlighter.

As a word of instructive advice...it may be difficult to figure out how to hold the pen. Just try different positions and your hand will develop 'memory' in holding it correctly, such that it captures text.

I guess my overall experience is neither the 100% success that others have had, nor the despair that a few have faced. I would certainly buy this product again.

This is an early report after owning the pen for a week. I'm an OS X Macintosh user and while we are frequently forgotten when it comes to cool hardware, Iris remembered us...thank you! Frankly the pen works better than I expected it to, especially after reading the occasional negative reviews, which seem to be greatly exaggerated. I was tempted to give the pen a 5-star rating, because what the scanner attempts to do is quite complicated, compared to a flat-bed scanner. The pen scanner must be both smaller and much more intelligent. What holds me back from a 5-star is that the pen is not entirely plug-and-play. If the pen is disconnected from the USB hub, it's my experience that you must reconnect the pen and then restart the computer, or the pen is not recognized. Several times I've needed to restart to get the pen working for me again. The tilting of the pen (which some complain about) is easy, because there's a wide flat surface on the pen that guides the angle. What is important to remember is that you must calibrate in the same light as you scan. My initial frustration at inaccurate scanning was because I had calibrated under a bright lamp light, then proceeded to scan in a way that my hand cast a shadow on the text. After the obligatory restart, and being careful to keep the light consistent on the paper, scanning progressed smoothly, and it seems the unit scans faster than the recommended 1 inch per second. I could hardly believe the reviews that the pen would scan directly into MS Word, but it does, quickly and accurately. One particular font in a book turned a lot of the "e"s into "c"s but a spellcheck corrected those in short order, and I suspect I was going much faster than was recommended at the time. So far, this pen scanner excels at the difficult task of taking notes--a few here, a few there--from textbooks and magazines. A worthy research aid for writers and students.

If you're looking for a fast and accurate handheld scanner, I strongly recommend the IRIS II Executive.

I first bought the Quick Link Pen from Wizcom and got incredibly frustrated by that product's slowness and ridiculously poor accurary. I ended up returning my Quick Link Pen and getting the IRIS II Exec instead.

The Iris II Exec is incredibly fast and more importantly incredibly accurate. I can scan faster than I would with a highlighter and I rarely get mistakes. I'm a Biochem Grad Student and I scan a lot of words that wouldn't seem easily recognized, but the IRIS II works like a champ.

Even though, the Iris II Exec is not portable, it's accuracy and speed make up for it in leaps and bounds. The company's claim of 99% accuracy is pretty on the money. I type 80 wpm and scanning with this pen is far faster than typing.

If you're looking for a Handheld Scanner, this is by far the best choice.

I just received my IRISPen II and cannot believe how easy to use and accurate it is.

I sat in my easy chair with my laptop on the table beside me and scanned in text from a book placed on a pillow on my lap (soft surface). I didn't take any particular pains; the scan was probably wavy, I used light pressure, and I did it fast -- just exactly like I would use a highlighter pen. The accuracy was 100%! I am amazed.

I've been looking for a tool like this for a long time and almost despaired. The other pen scanner I tried was useless and I had to return it. I'm glad I didn't give up and gave the IRISPen II a chance. Thanks to my grad student message board for recommending it!

What a difference this is going to make for my research this summer!

Carole Beckham

The IRISPen II Executive is the best scanning pen on the market as far as I'm concerned. I have tried the pen from C-Technologies and I have tried the pen from Wizcom and the IRISPen blew them both out of the water. The accuracy and speed was far better than the competing pens. This technology is amazing, much faster than if I were to type everything in. With the IRISPen I was even able to scan my signature in and attach it to my company emails. I would highly recommend this product!

I have been pretty impressed with the accuracy of this device. On one carefully scanned document with 12 point type, it was well over 99% accurate (better than my C-pen C600 which is about 95%). The pen is very quick with no pauses between lines scanned (the C-pen pauses between lines). The software was easy to install and it was running in a matter of minutes (a little easier than C-pen's serial port set-up). It also scans directly into applications (C-pen docs must be copied and pasted).

The downside is that it must be attached to a computer via the USB (unlike the C-pen) and that limits its portability. It also is a little bulkier than the C-pen.
Overall, it does a good job on a variety of tasks. If you favor portabilty, try the C-pen. If you want accuracy, try the Iris Pen II.

This is not so much a review as a heads up to the reviewer (Roy Herron) who said it was useless to him because he scans on colored backgrounds. You can adjust for background color on the Executive model just for this purpose. You said you bought from a seller, so I'm guessing that you didn't get all the documentation with your purchase. So, call ReadIris Tech Support (1-(561)-921-0847) and they can tell you how. I use mine for scanning barcodes when packing books. Makes it easy to keep track of what's in each box.

After only a couple of days I wonder how I finished the first half of grad school without it. Notes are so much easier and faster when one just edits, formats and clarifies instead of starting with a blank page.

It works well in both right to left and left to right mode (must flip scanner 180). I find using it with a ruler siglifigantly steadies the scanner; therefore, improveing OCR quality. I still ocasionally see capital letters in odd places, and when I use it left handed it seems to always make mistakes with the first letter scanned either printing the wrong one or leaving it off entirely. Even so I find the OCR quality comprable to most flatbed scanners and much faster!!I can simply highlight the text I need and it instantaneously appears at the cursor, run spellchecker, and save. Instead of waiting for warm up, scanning the whole page, selecting the section of the text I need, recognizing the text, proofing, exporting to a text file and then copying and pasteing into the appropriate application. It used to be faster to retype, but not anymore. :-)

Best of all it actually works for scanning tables. I've never seen any OCR do that with a high degree of accuracy before. Usually thick table borders are translated into text, but no troubles here. I'm sold on IRIS products from now on!

I value customer reviews and refer to them when purchasing items (especially expensive ones). So I needed to share my review with others.

This scanner really works! I'm a college professor and like to scan things out of textbooks, etc. to make lecture notes quicker. I've used it for an hour or so and already have excellent results. As I get more used to it I expect near perfect results.

I don't have to do anything special like use a ruler or turn the book upside down. Just make sure you are sitting at a table or desk so what you are scanning is on a solid surface.

Installation of the hardware gives you the warning that it has not passed windows XP compatibility. I started using it anyway and have not had any problems.

Good luck with it! I highly recommend it.

I initially submitted a review describing this product as terrible. However, after spending a number of hours frustrated with the results I finally found the solution to my problems. The solution lay in moving the brightness cursor in the scan test to the darkest possible position. Once I did this the success rate rose from less than 50% to around 99%. I'm hoping it will improve even further as I get used to using the scanner. One happy and relieved customer!!