Customer Reviews

IRISPen Executive 6

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I am a doctoral student in the humanities and I got this scanner because as I research, I like to copy passages on various topics into my computer for quick searching ability. This pen scanner has increased the speed with which I copy notes. There is a learning curve with this product. It takes a little time to get used to the feel of a scan that will turn out perfectly copied text. Also, I've found that if you take a few seconds to calibrate your pen before a copying session, it greatly improves the accuracy. I am a fairly fast typer 40 wpm, and I have typed out a passage, and corrected my errors, and then scanned the same passage and corrected the errors. I found that the pen was almost twice as fast. The software is aesthetically lacking and not completely intuitive, but it gets the job done.

While this product is not perfect in every way, it improves upon the other alternatives to digitize passages of text from books and reports.

I've used this product with both Mac and PC (XP). It has scanned text easily into Pages, and Word for me.

Customer service was a little difficult to contact, but eventually I was able to contact them, and they sent me the Mac version of the software free of charge via an e mail attachment. I don't really use the scanner for foreign languages, handwritten notes, etc so I can't really comment on those features.

I am an academic and thought this product would be great for rapid scanning of book passages. Unfortunately, as is the case with earlier models both of Iris and other brands, about half of what I scanned was not correctly entered. I tried numerous positions and numerous books and numerous languages (English, French, German) but the same problem kept occurring. The bottom line: It is quicker and cheaper to type.

About 30 minutes after opening the box I was able to scan with my pen and get very good accuracy. I have no idea what the other reviewers are doing, but mine worked well after less than 5 minutes of practice. I use my pen to copy a paragraph or two from books in order to discuss the author's viewpoint in MSN groups. I found that the speed of the scan is important in getting accurate results. Scanning at the speed I would normally read the text gives a result that needs very little cleanup using a spellchecker. I am not the greatest typist, and this product will ensure that I probably never will get much better.

Downloading the program from the enclosed CD was effortless, and I have not changed from the factory settings. IRISPen definitely gets a thumbs up from me. My wife says it looks like magic, and she is correct. As usual.

I bought this originally to get some UPC information into my MacBook laptop without having to type. The first night I had this on my computer, I couldn't get it to work no matter how much I calibrated it. However, after finding out that I had to hold the pen still on a piece of paper while calibrating, it worked almost flawlessly afterwards.

In my classes, I can use it easily to quote essays with very good accuracy. For left handed use, they set it so I swipe the pen from the right side of the page to the left, which is much a much smoother motion. The only drawback happens when I get to the end of a line where the pen becomes creative. If the formatting n the paper that I quote off of puts a dash at the end of a line, the pen will try to make the partial word into a word in it's built in dictionary.

All in all, a GREAT value, and I am very pleased with this product.

I am writing my dissertation and I was lamenting to my Chair how difficult it was to do the Lit Review portion as typing quotes and passages from books and texts was both mechanically and visually difficult (holding the book down, typing, finding my place back in the material etc.). He then suggested a pen scanner. He uses the ectaco pen. It is well-reviewed on this site. I was going to get that but it only works for PCs. I have a Mac. So I found all these scanners that supposedly works for the Mac, including this one. I wanted one real fast so the ones that were not sold directly by Amazon were out of consideration (I wanted overnight shipping which costs $3.99 with my prime account). The reviews daunted me as this product only got 3 or so stars. I gritted my teeth and went for it, thinking I could always return it. I got the product and wow! It works! The only thing it didn't do was automatically italicize a selection that was italicized in the original. I am known for reading instructions. So my advise to all the naysayers: RTFM. Now, in my real job as a school administrator, this has already become indispensable in the 24 hours that I got it. We are going through our accreditation and much of our data are on print and not digitized, it was a pain retyping the things I already did. I went through the next materials with the scanner . .. IT EVEN DOES TABLES! The amount of time it saves me is phenomenal. The text reading feature was cute. I can already see all the educational uses I can put this through. I am certainly going to have my teachers use this with their students. I got this from Amazon for $40 less than the others. Certainly a budget and time savings. Thank you IRIS!

I received my pen by mail late this afternoon. During the evening, while watching TV, I played around with the pen. Having read reviews here, I expected it to be difficult to use the pen at first but had no problem using the pen to scan. After a couple tries, I realized you have to line up the arrow and press straight and hard enough so the light stays on. I purchased this to enter info from receipts for tax purposes for my business. It took a bit to figure out how to place the info into a spreadsheet, but there are online places to seek help and the downloaded software has a lot of help, as well. I haven't figured out how to set the tabs to make entering the data easier, but, for the first time dealing with the pen, I think I learned to do much of what I want to do with it. The negative is that it doesn't seem to understand all characters. I would end up with a ! or - instead of a letter or number. Then I have to correct it, which defeats my purpose for buying the pen, but since I just received the pen, there might be something I can do about it. I hope. I also realized it seems to work best if set to a common font i.e. helvetica, palatino, etc. It is not perfect but will make doing a tedious task less tedious.

I bought this product with the hopes that it could cut some of my workload in half. And it did exactly just that. Using the pen, I was able to scan all the text that I needed into my computer in no time as opposed to having to type all that information in. It took me a couple of minutes in the beginning to figure out the right way to scroll and scan and calibrate, but once I did, I used the pen without a hitch for the most part. I need to scan barcodes for my job which is why I opted for the executive version. If you just need to scan text then the express 6 will be good enough for you. All in all its a good product, especially once you master it.

I had the old Iris Pen 2 and wanted and upgrade so this is that upgrade I want. The version 6 of the pen is not very different, in handling, and I find it does and excellent, realtime OCR translation job. I find that many online complainers, as well people in person, don't understand that as you would use a highlighter on a sheet of paper, or in a book, you use this tool. This is not for some academic who wants to archive whole books and who might have arthritis and can't hold a pen straight. You just press down, move to the side with the pen and watch the wonders smoothly come to screen. I'm studying for 3 tests now, and I don't want to scan a whole page, I'm scanning on needed lines to memorize/practice, put that in a quick excel sheet, and you can't get any better than this. The other scanners basically need you to scan a whole page, and then run that through some cheapo ocr program that gets is wrong 80 percent of the time. That wastes extreme amounts of time, for what I wish to do. Then I want to translate another job, and that's just fine too with this. Most people, who complain about this, were not looking for this particular pen's functionality, they were looking for a full page scanner, yet since they didn't read about the product they bought, are pissed. That particular group should go buy a Vupoint Magic Wand and don't harsh on the mellow of Iris Pen.

Iris is nearly impossible to get a hold of so don't expect anything in the way of support. We purchased this item because Iris was offering a "rebate". After months of waiting and trying to contact the company-the rebate never happened. The phone number for the rebate was out of service and Iris intentionally makes it almost impossible to get a hold of anyone through their website. Very disappointed.

I received this in hopes that I could scan text from books to create concise notes to study from quickly and accurately, I was wrong though. This product did not scan text accurately, actually did not come close and while it is a great concept I am highly dissappointed in the performance of this pen scanner especially at a cost of about $180. There is a lot of work still to be done to make this a quality product which can save time and allow for quick accurate scans and I really hope that there are companies who are working to make this happen but for now it is not worth the money or hassle, I guess I'll just have to type all my material or find pdf or electronic versions of my books if at all possible. At least I tried........very dissappointed!