Planon DocuPen Pen-Sized Full Page Scanner (DPEN-BW)

by Planon

Product Details

Product Manual [3.13mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0000BZMLE
• Item model number: DPEN-BW
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 22, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The DocuPen from Planon is a battery-operated handheld scanner that's ideal for portable scanning purposes. It can store up to 100 pages in its internal flash memory, and it scans at approximately 4 to 8 seconds per page. The DocuPen scans a full 8 inches, side to side, so you can scan an entire page, including text and graphics in as little as 4 seconds.

Scan newspapers, magazine articles, books, notes, receipts, contracts, sketches, and more. The DocuPen scans in monochrome at 200 x 100 dpi or 200 x 200 dpi resolution. It integrates with Outlook, Word, and other computer applications, so you can easily convert scanned images into editable text and e-mail documents.

Weighing just 2 ounces, the DocuPen is easy to transport, while the included ScanSoft Paper port image software with OCR helps you to get the best results from your scans. Ideal for business executives, lawyers, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, sales people, construction, architects, engineers, accountants, insurance adjusters, government, teachers, students, and others, the DocuPen allows you to scan documents while on the road or out of the office. After scanning, you can transfer data to your PC via a USB or serial interface. Compatible with PC platforms only, the DocuPen comes backed with a 90-day limited warranty.

What's in the Box
DocuPen, four energizer coin cells, USB cable, CD ROM, quick start sheet, calibration sheet, warranty card, operation manual, leather case

Product Description

PLANON DPEN-BW -- The world's smallest full page 8.5" x 11" portable scanner, the DocuPen slides easily down each page, recording text in highly readable 200 x 100 dpi monochrome. Connection - USB Includes proprietary 1.55v Silver Oxide batteries (Energizer Type 389) Twain interface System requirements - Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP, 32MB+ RAM, 60MB Hard Drive Space, USB port Pen size - 8 x 1/2 Weight - 2 ounces

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment, April 3, 2004

By 

Bliss (Gainesville, Florida USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Planon DocuPen Pen-Sized Full Page Scanner (DPEN-BW) (Office Product)

This device holds great promise, but doesn't deliver consistently. I'm a history grad student wishing to defeat the high cost and tedium of photocopying documents in the archives. The DocuPen was difficult to set up, the USB cable never worked (the conventional cable did), and the clarity of the scanned images was uneven. The biggest problem: it took repeated efforts to obtain usable images. Thus, before I could finish my work, I had to connect the portable scanner to my laptop to verify that I had captured what I came to the archive for. Often the scanner would stop reading the document before I had scanned it completely. Thus I had to scan the same item multiple times. The manual warns that may take "a bit of practice" to get the speed and steadiness of your scan-passes correct. But after four tedious hours of climbing the learning curve, I boxed it up for return, and went back to the photocopier. Next trip, I'll go back to dragging a flatbed scanner into the archive.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very hard to use; terrible OCR capability, July 29, 2004

By 

G. A Wheeler "gramix" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Planon DocuPen Pen-Sized Full Page Scanner (DPEN-BW) (Office Product)

I was really looking forward to getting my Docupen. I sold my Wizcom Quicklink in anticipation. What a disappoinment. If this product worked well it would be fantastic. The size and weight is really great.

Main problem is that it is really hard to get decent scans. After a few hours I was getting about 1 in 3 usable (with 2 out of 3 failing before the page was done). The problem appears to be getting the rollers to turn consistently. They are quite stiff, and the moment they stop turning - which can easily happen - the scanner assumes the page is done. There is no way to delete the last scan using the device itself; you have to attach it to the PC for that. So even though you know you've just done a bad scan which is eating up the memory, you can't delete it. Presumably with time scanning would get easier, but this inability to delete a known bad last scan seems a serious shortcoming to me given how many scans end up being bad.

Even if you get a "good" scan (which with this device at 200dpi b/w is far from great), the OCR software (PaperPort) is appalling. It is totally incapable of making sense of multi-column text like magazines, it seems, and repeated everything several times in one big mess. In frustration I installed an old copy of OmniPage Pro, which despite being about 4 or more years old, did a much better (but still not satisfactory) job. As I want this scanner almost entirely for OCR applications, it fails to meet my needs and it is going to be returned.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for everyone, May 27, 2004

By 

gail (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Planon DocuPen Pen-Sized Full Page Scanner (DPEN-BW) (Office Product)

It is very difficult to get a decent scan without several tries for each page. With practice I was finally able to scan a flat document on a desktop, but the quality still wasn't great. The main reason I got this pen scanner, however, was to scan archives of very old documents bound into books. Since they're never completely flat, it is virtually impossible to get through a page without it shutting itself off. The manual suggests that for books you should start at the binding and scan left to right, instead of top to bottom, thereby creating a "landscape" document. But guess what - the scanner is only 8.5" wide, so you can't capture a regular letter-sized document in landscape format. I think it's a great concept, but for limited applications. With improvements, and possibly a longer "pen", I think the product has a lot of potential.