Wizcom SP1000V SuperPen Translator

Other products by WizCom

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 2 inches ; 10 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000AOWWD
• Item model number: SP1000V
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Electronics > Office Electronics > Electronic Dictionaries, Thesauri & Translators > Foreign Language Translators

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 2, 2008

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description
With the Wizcom SuperPen translator, you can now translate documents quickly, easily, and accurately. With over 30 downloadable language dictionaries available on the Wizcom web site, you can increase comprehension, enhance communication, and store documents for later use.

Weighing just 3 ounces, the SuperPen Translator is easy to carry and fits easily into a purse or bag for convenient traveling. The SuperPen is bidirectional with English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish, and Swedish, while all other languages are unidirectional to English only. For those learning English, the SuperPen features integrated text-to-speech technology, which provides a word-by-word pronunciation of the scanned English text.

Supported font sizes range from 6 to 22 points and include bold, italic, underlined, and inverted. The pen has a 97% OCR accuracy rate. You can also manually input text, making the SuperPen ideal for translating signposts and other unscannable information.

Store your scans (up to 1,000 pages worth) and transfer them to your computer or PDA at your leisure. The SuperPen can transmit data via IRDA (to a PDA), 9-pin serial port, or optional USB. The included AAA batteries have a battery life of about a month, while the internal flash memory card ensures that you don't lose any stored data in case your batteries should fail. The SuperPen translator also comes backed with a one-year warranty on both parts and labor.

What's in the Box
Wizcom SuperPen, CD-ROM, serial cable, user's guide, AAA batteries

Product Description
The SuperPen Translator is a hand-held scanner and translator. It enables users to scan full lines of text, receive instantaneous word-by-word translation/s and hear scanned English words pronounced aloud. The SuperPen comes with over 30 downloadable language dictionaries; By changing dictionaries as needed, users easily become fluent all over the world. Integrated Text-to-Speech technology enables users to pronounce new English words with confidence. It's ideal for students and travelers alike. Transfer data easily to PC or PDA via Infra-red (IRDA) or USB Alternative input tools are included for entering words that you can't scan (e.g., street signs) Size - 6 x 1-1/2 x 1 Weight - 3 oz.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Efficient addition to an abridged dual-language dictionary, December 2, 2004

By	nial_l (Maryland, United States) - See all my reviews

The superpen SP1000 is easy to setup and works almost as well as advertised. I have the version that supports bilingual dictionaries.

The pen came with a CD and a serial cable to connect to the computer. If you plan to transfer data to, or load dictionaries from, a laptop, check that your laptop has a serial port. The pen is supposed to support IR as well, but my laptop does not detect it (though I didn't really try to make this feature work). I installed the software from CD onto my Windows XP machine and connected the pen with the cable. After setting the pen to use the PC connection I was able to choose my dictionaries and load them onto the pen. The dictionaries took a couple of minutes apiece to load. Due to memory space taken by the applications that are pre-loaded on the pen I was only able to load 2 dictionaries at a time. I believe (not sure) the pro version has more memory so I would suggest investigating that version if you study more than one language or want to use dictionaries with other features like note-taking.

I tried scanning both left-handed and right-handed. In left-handed mode it is easier to see where to place the scanning point in front of the word. The pen rolls smoothly and the character recognition worked well even in a book that is not completely flat and has smallish type.

It is difficult to capture a short word by itself, but scanning several words at a time works well for capturing short words. The pen display allows you to scroll across the scanned words, showing the definition for each word in turn.

I have two reasons for giving the product less than 5 stars. When scanning French the pen does not always accurately identify reflexive verbs preceded by an apostrophe, e.g., s'asseoir should be recognized as a reflexive verb asseoir with a preceding s'. Compared to my pocket Langenscheidt dictionary, the electronic translation dictionary supplied with the superpen provides a lower quality of translation and has fewer alternative word definitions.

I suggest to Wizcom that they partner with a better French dictionary provider, such as Langenscheidt, in order to improve the quality of the translation.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Tool for travellers and students alike, August 5, 2004

By	AA (USA) - See all my reviews

I tried the SuperPen a couple of days back. It is amazing! You can pick up any text in virtially any language, run your SuperPen over it and abracadabra! it is translated to your choice of language. A little speaker will even say it out to ensure you get the correct pronounciation!
Students, want to make book notes but don't have a laptop or just hate typing? Use the SuperPen. With enough memory to store data worth 1000 pages, you can never run out of space! And transfer your notes to your device(PC, PDA etc) whenever you would like to.
That said, the SuperPen does have a few problems:
1) You have to get used to holding the pen in correct position so that the content can be properly scanned.
2) You gotta run the SuperPen over the printed text slowly or it will garble the data
3) Will NOT work well if you want to scan data off magazines with glossy pages.
4) At $180, the SuperPen is not exactly affordable by all.

CONCLUSION: If you travel abroad a lot or have to take notes from books/reference materials, SuperPen is the best device out there. You will not be disappointed.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars limited function and misunderstandings, May 27, 2006

By	Dieter Heine "dheine" (Bremen, Germany) - See all my reviews

I use it almost since 1999 and the almost all functions described by WizCom work well. It is a usefull and valuable tool . There are 3 drawbacks for advanced users probably like me:
1. steady power supply without batteries is missing for enduring works (I constructed some cables for an external supply)

2. both products integrated into superpen can only be used seperately. There is no internal interface. This has one major drawback: You can only translate inside with quicktionary or you have to scan the same word twice for sending it to the PC. Also it doesnot make sense to switch circumstantial to the other pen function inside before scanning same words twice.

When I read the papers about the fine highlight of PC exchange everybody may be some kind of fooled (like I felt afterwards) in assuming that translated text should be able to be sent to the PC. The reading functions without translation for office purposes are not bad. But how makes the integration of both pens still sense when there is no benefit of sharing their functions by exchanging the scanned text between them ?

3. WizComs policy for permitting new software development is not open enough. They think the product is perfect and development has been closed for years. Some people miss support for open platform like linux/unix. Hints that QuickLink works well with the WINE (Windows) Emulation is missing. I tried it and it works.

4. Yes the price was already mentioned by many reviewers. Maybe it would be justified if both valuable tools would profit more from a better integration of two in one pen.