Customer Reviews

IRISPen Express

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

after about 1.5 hours of practice and recalibrating over and over again, this is what the first few lines scanned from the irispen manual look like:

'he IRISPen may be the biggest sensation in computeriand since the mouse \ As efficient as computers are, you have to encode your data first. If you've ever If y-u'veever rekeyed text, you kn(ng and time-consuming it can be.... The IRISPen, a unique product for every computer user, offers instantaneous vaI at your fingertips. Text rec-!nit-o-- -her; you.q want it, w-en 1 The IR nsist- oftw2 coE1P8--nts: a unique g--y-c-eHI'ell-si-e- scan=. ner and the powerful PCR-Il ("Pen Character Recognition") text recognition technology. The basic principle could hardly be easier: slide the IRISPen over a line of text and it is e :o your application in.st-ntJ-.as if-eyed in -ut up to 30 times fas!er. (JP to a 100 characters can be entered per second. Cut from paper, paste to Windows-: can you imagine a simpler way of entering text?

Is it worth it? Spell check couldn't even fix this disaster. I am a very computer saavy person, I don't think I am using it wrong, I think they just really haven't perfected the text recognition software. The one review above must be an irispen employee. I find it hard to believe right out of the box, that it worked perfectly...and then to encourage you to upgrade??? Laughable. You will spend more time fixing the scanning errors than if you just typed it yourself. Going back to amazon tomorrow!

This worked once and then stopped calibrating, so it no longer functions. Iris claims to have customer support, but there is none. I have been calling and emailing them once a week for three months. I got one reply a month ago promising to replace it. I never got it. Their web site has little to no useful help. Iris ranks as the worse company I have ever dealt with. Pity anyone who gets a faulty pen! What a waste of money! I hate feeling ripped off!

As a scholar who deals with a lot of rare material, I thought this pen would be a god-send in helping me transcribe material to my computer. The manufacturer boasts near-100% accuracy. I give it 40% at best. Sometimes, if you have a white piece of paper, clear, 12-point text, you can get 80% accuracy, but this is a rare occurrence.

I ended up spending more time "correcting" the text from the Iris Pen than I would have typing it out...so now my $70 "tool" sits unused on my desk.

I can't wait for the day that an actual pen-scanner works, but today is not that day.

This entire opinion is entered directly into the amazon review page with the IRISPen using a hard copy of a file I printed with my inkjet printer, very typical, 12-pt, Times font.

I took the pen out of its box and read the directions very carefully. As usual, the Mac I took the pen out of its box and read the directions very caretuuy. Be sure to click the desktop image to bring up a fresh window with the IrisPen.

I read the bad reviews here, but I really need what IRISPen is supposed to do. I took the plunge and ordered it, bracing myself for the worst.

Calibration was a breeze; you just touch the pen to a sample of white paper. Then, without reading into the manual, I drew the pen over a sentence In an open book. Flawless! I went on to do the entire page, speeding up until I was going full speed, over one line per second, as fast as I could go and keep the pen on eourse. Three errors in about 600 words; a missed period and two "a's" seen as "11."

This item greatly helps my editorial work. No longer do I have to destroy books to get a few pages onto my flatbed scanner, nor do I have to re-type long passages of text from bound sources. The pen doesn't care about the font of the original, and you can select any font and size you want to be sent to the target program.

My opinion is that some people are naturally klutzy and may have difficulties getting the feel of this unusual tool. There is a certain slant and technique that came naturally to me, but might be awkward to someone who can't dance or throw baskets. There is a If you keep your eye on the arrow, allowing the line of text to become a passing blur as you drag the pen, it all works out very well. A little practice might help, although I needed none at all.

I highly recommend this item without reservations to any Mac user. It works better than advertised, taking into account I haven't even cracked the instruction manual yet. The PC instructions seemed quite geeky and were considerably longer than the Mac instructions, but I imagine those still confined to the tiny PC universe can probably do fine with IRISPen if they pay very close attention to the instruction manual.

I have read the reviews here and elsewhere about this product before I bought it. But I was in the need of something for quick little jobs - more convenient than my flatbed scanner and faster than my typing - and gave it a try. No regrets at all.

I do a lot of research with quoting of one or two paragraphs out of books or papers, mainly in German language. The IrisPen works very well for me in English, in French and in German (no problem with the umlauts etc.; I have not tried other languages).

One thing is important: you have to calibrate the pen very carefully like any instrument that needs calibration. Calibrate it with a WHITE sheet of printer paper, not with a slightly off-white like a book page or similar.

And you have to practice a bit how you hold it to get the hang of it. When scanning you should see the green light ALL the time, it should not flicker. It is named "pen" but you manoeuvre it different than a writing pen. If you keep that in mind you will be successful!

My IrisPen sits just behind my keyboard, as easily to grab as my mouse and I love it as a big time saver.

In short - THE IRIS PEN SUCKS, buy the CPen instead.
I am a law student who had used the Cpen 800C for the past two years. I have become completely dependent on it and was crushed when it died. It turns out Cpen no longer makes that model (was portable, didn't have to be connected to your computer to use) so I stupidly decided to try the IRIS pen. It is a 100% waste of money - it scans crap on a perfect surface and is even worse on my textbook pages that are ivory instead of pure white. After two frustrating days of trying everything I could think of to get the IRIS to scan accurately, I bought the CPen 20. It works perfectly , you can get a 2 or 3 year warranty for $5 or $10 bucks, and for $13 I got a mousepad that allows you to use it as a mouse (very cool!)

This product fails miserably at every type of text I tried. Any font, any size, any color, it simply didn't work. I spent more time scanning, pasting, and FIXING the errors than I would have ever spent typing the text directly myself.

This isn't even a good value if it were offered FREE because of the frustration level. Plus, as a Mac user, it is so clunky as to make me want to throw it out the window (I returned it instead).

Do NOT buy this unless 1) you have a very high frustration tolerance 2) you like using white-out 3) you have $100 you want to waste or 4) need to own every gadget, even if they don't remotely work.

Have I been clear enough how little I think of this product???

Cheers!

The performance of this scanner is execrable. On RARE occasions, it surprises you with a perfect scan of an entire line of text. On the other 24 scans, the quality ranges from totally garbled (not one character correct) to its "high quality" of text requiring a minimum of 5 corrections per line.

The only possible justification for buying this pen scanner is to use with a notebook in a library where a copier or flatbed scanner isn't available. Even then, be prepared to scan each line 5 or 6 times to get a usable entry (which will still contain errors).

I gave this product 1 star because that's the lowest option. It deserves a zero or lower.

The two 5-star ratings above can ONLY have been given by ringers, in my opinion.

The IRISPen works as advertised. I am currently reading for my PhD comprehensive exam and I use the pen to lift quotes from the books I am reading. I am careful to calibrate the pen with each new book and each new lighting environment (i.e. when going from my desk to the couch, from daylight to desk lamp, from home to office, and vice versa). It only works well if the page I am scanning is held flat on a solid surface. It works with near 100% accuracy on hardcover books but does a terrible job if I just hold a softcover book on my laps, I can't imagine trying that on a magazine; hard and flat is key. When used carefully the IRISPen is a huge time saver. My only regret is that I discovered this gadget after I was halfway through my readings and my notes on the first 20 books where taken by hand.

I actually bought the IRISPen Express when I read the special price offered in the October issue of PCWorld. It was $30 off the retail price of $130 if you went to the link shown in the ad.If I had read the reviews here before I ordered, I might have had reservations about my decision.

It arrived in only a couple of days....the first big surprise. I opened the box and did exactly as the instructions said on loading the software first before plugging in the pen reader into the USB slot. What I got was no power to the pen when I tired to calibrate. I then read in the installed instruction manual that USB slots in the front of many computers do not give a good connection to power and to try one in the back of the PC. That worked!!!

After doing some test scans, I tried a few lines out of books and magazines. The results was not perfect, but I feel it does a good job after practice and doing what I see others mentioned; using a flat surface, having consistant light and keeping the pointer inline with the text when scanning.

I don't recommend more than one cup of coffee before doing many scans. A shaky hand can have an affect on the quality. On books when you get near the middle of a page that isn't flat can produce unreliable OCR as well.