Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I recently got my DocuPen. I was extremely impressed with it. It clearly outshines any of those line-by-line scanners such as Wizcom, C-Pen, etc.

The technology is simply mind boggling, the way they cram all that impressive technology into one small pen-shaped like device.

I was impressed with the scan quality of the device as well, considering that its a small pen-shaped device. The sample scans on the DocuPen homepage is truly an indication of the quality of an attainable scan. I scan mostly documents, bank statements, deeds, receipts etc. In fact all of those scans of those documents all turned out good, as good as the quality indicated on the site.

As for the OCR feature, the OCR was decent. OCR basically onverts your text based document scans into editable text, but then again OCR was never a good or perfect technology. In fact the DocuPen never really promoted the OCR feature from my recollection. I have a high-res flatbed scanner, and when I used the OCR feature, I still get errors from the conversion and that's from a hi-res flatbed scanner.

I love how light weight it is and how portable it is. Truly a tool for road warriors.

I am also looking out for Planon's future DocuPen version which I hear is sometime soon.

Let's recognize it. It looks and feels great. Using it you look like a CIA agent working in a mission stealing secret documents from the Kremlin.

As Paul Taylor from the Financial Times said: "it has the WOW factor". You use it and everybody turns to see you and your 007 gadget.

Although it takes more or less 60 minutes of practice before you can venture to successfuly scan any document, I can assure you that after a short learning period you'll get incredible results.

Of course this is not a 1200 dpi scanner so do not expect exact replicas but a workable copy that you can take anywhere anytime.

The batteries' life and/or price is not an issue as this is not a replacement for a regular photocopy machine. This is an innovative device that could save your day if you need to get a copy of an important document and there is nothing around you that looks like a fax or photocopier. It simply solves another kind of problems, that's it.

Under these circumstances battery price is not at stake (By the way, a pack of fresh batteries can scan up to 200 pages, which is fine under most general circumstances (again, this is not, and have not meant to be, a cost effective substitute of a photocopier)

Lawyers, real estate agents, sales and distribution personnel, executives, researchers, professors, students, engineers, you name it. I am sure that you have been at least once in a situation where you would have given anything to get access to a photocopier. Well.....not anymore.

I have been using my Docupen for two weeks and it is amazing

The DocuPen has been very effecient tool for me. I scan lots of receipts and forms and various other financial documents, something that is important to me at times is capturing signatures, which the DocuPen is capable of.

I have used up the one set of batteries already and basically I scanned up to 220 pages which is 20 more pages than what the manual recommends.

The time wasted on driving around to find a photocopying machine or flatbed scanner and actually doing the photocopy can now be eliminated with the DocuPen. Just take the DocuPen and capture your required document on the spot.

Also getting the scanning technique down was not hard at all, as I got the technique down after 5 trial scans on a regular Word file print out. What I like about the DocuPen is that we are actually a part of the scanning mechanism, a really cool idea & concept.

I recently purchased the DocuPen and the product has been fine for me. It connected perfectly fine with Windows XP and to my other computer systems such as Win 98 and Win 2000.

For some people I know that if a product does not work, it may be in part due to something in the computer system itself. Take a look into the system first to see if its compatible with the product, because the product worked wonders for me.

The DocuPen literally took me like 3 scans to get the technique down. And I get very legible scans.

It seems that many expect pure carbon copy duplicates, but that's not really the concept behind the DocuPen, because I really see it as a tool to scan documents and other materials for reference that does not need to be super high quality. If need be, then use a high resolution flatbed scanner. The key difference is in the fact that it is totally portable, something that a flatbed scanner is not.

The free software is also amazing, its called PaperPort from ScanSoft that integrates with various programs from my computer like Outlook, Word, etc...I am also impressed with the OCR feature within PaperPort because it does a very good translation of scanned text image into editable text.

By the way, the technical support staff is superb in assisting with technical needs, because I only had a slight issue but was resolved immediately.

I am a lawyer that has found the DocuPen to be a very useful device in my field. I am able to capture important documents in the courtroom, at a client's home/office, and even in the library for legal research purposes. It also came in handy for in office use when one of my client required a document to be e-mailed immediately, but we did not have a flatbed scanner, so therefore we used the DocuPen to scan the documents and send it via email using the free software provided - ScanSoft PaperPort. It also has a neat OCR feature in the software that can convert text based documents into editable text in Microsoft Word. The DocuPen was very easy to get a hang of once you get the scanning technique down. I have since then purchased more DocuPen units for my team at the office.

After two hours of practice and a session with the quite helpful help line, I got some usable scans out of this largish pen-sized gadget. It is elegant to look at (what a pretty toy!), but the batteries are a bear to change, and fairly pricey. I'm not sure I won't get more use out of a digital camera to copy documents in archives, but if you can afford it and you like gizmos, this is for you.

I bought this product with very high expectations. Silly me. No matter how many tries, no matter how much advice and valiant effort from technical support, no matter how many work arounds attempted, my computer and the scanner could not connect; i.e. the USB connection did not work. Shortly after I finally gave up, I installed a new digital camera, also calling for an USB connection (natch) with no problems at all. My suspicion is that the scanner is not at all comfortable with XP, which is on my system. But whatever the reason, the scanner failed to install, I returned the product for a credit, and commented to the technical support that "It simply shouldn't be this hard."