WizCom E04087 QuickLink-Pen Elite Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)I received QuickLink Elite pen today and have been testing it for the past 6 hours. Now I am finished, I would like to share my thought about this device with you. The box came with the content as described by Amazon. My surprise was that the 135 page color manual, I thought those were extinct! That is in addition to the PDF one in the CD.
Installation on Windows XP Pro. SP2 (Tablet edition) went smoothly, the instructions on the self run CD were easy to follow. You basically install the driver for the cable [serial at the device connector to USB (II in my case) at the PC end], then you install the desktop application which is a very basic utility that lists the files on your pen, and allows you to communicate, change settings, transfer data, and add software to your pen. Once you install the software, you will be asked to connect the device to the computer to start the communication. Initially I had a problem connecting to the device because it conflicted with Bluetooth serial ports. So I disabled the Bluetooth serial ports and removed some extra unused serial COM ports from the computer device manager. I reinstalled the pen drive from the CD, restarted the computer but before I connect again I did one more IMPORTANT step that is not mentioned anywhere. You Baud rate on the pen (go to settings, communications, baud rate) must be the same as your computer COM port (go to device manager, right click on the new COM port), choose a rate, in my case 57600 worked best. After that I managed to exchange files, install software to the pen. In addition, It tried the IrDA with my laptop, the text file was transferred instantly. PDA (iPAQ) recognize the device but transfer of files needed third-party software (Peacmaker $15). In their website, they say there will be an upgrade where third party will not be needed.
After that scanning the text went smoothly, I also scanned small image ( max 8 mm wide), installed the tables software on the pen, scanned directly on the PC ... all went very well. I scanned a type font 10 textbook, out of the total 543, 24 were mis-recognized (some missing one letter, some had capital letter in the middle, while others were just a mess). That is about 95.5% accuracy, not bad, considering that I get about 85% with a flatbed scanner. It takes me about 5 to 6 seconds per line (about 5 minutes per page), so this is truly for text snippets rather than a whole page scanning. Image scanning is useful for signatures, Greek letters, etc. Quality is just OK, you can also scan tables, business cards (to outlook), URLs (get sent to favorites) with the included add-ins on the CD, and bar codes (additional downloads from the wizcom website). All in all I will recommend this device for students, researchers, & people who type slow or rather collect different set of texts from books, journals, etc. It fits 1000 pages internal memory, besides scanning directly to your word processor. It has built in English dictionary, good for language students. It also read aloud any text that is scanned (I do not see the use of this one) but the pen comes with earphone with volume controls.
All in all, this pen turn out as it was described and I think it is a keeper. Thanks for reading this long review and I hope it helped someone.


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The QuickLink-Pen Elite is an updated version of the very popular and successful QuickLink-Pen, providing users with new and improved electronic note-taking capabilities. The QuickLink-Pen Elite reads notes and definitions aloud, beams to smart phones as well as to PDAs and PCs, includes English dictionary definitions, and connects via USB to your PC.
Used just like a yellow highlighter, the QuickLink-Pen Elite lets you collect electronically notes from any printed text–anytime, anywhere. The QuickLink-Pen Elite is ideal for students, doctors, business people, or researchers who need the ability to quickly and easily take notes whenever and wherever they might be–in a library, on a plane, or in a business meeting.
The QuickLink-Pen Elite comes complete with several useful applications. The scan and store feature allows you to store up to 1,000 pages of text; transfer stored text to PDAs (PalmOS and WinCE), Smart phones (PalmOS and Windows Mobile 2003), or PCs via IRDA Infra red connection; transfer stored notes to PCs via USB connection (and automatically create Microsoft Word documents); and read the scanned notes aloud using the text to speech function, either through the built-in speaker or headphones. Additional scanning languages are supplied on CD-ROM and include German, Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French. Scan and define allows you to display the definition of any word in the notes, using the included American Heritage Concise Dictionary, while the scan to PC function allows real-time scanning directly via the USB connection into any Windows based application, with the scanned text appearing at the cursor point. With image capture, you can scan and store small images that can then be transferred to a PC at a later time.
Handy applications are supplied on CD-ROM for optional installation. Address Book scans business cards and synchronizes with a desktop or PDA address book, such as Outlook. Table Builder scans data in spreadsheet format and transfers it directly to Microsoft Excel on a PC. Internet Links scans URLs (web addresses) and transfers them directly to your Internet Explorer favorites list.
What's in the Box QuickLink Pen Elite, USB cable, getting started guide, user's manual, CD-ROM (includes installations for add-ons, QuickLink-Pen Elite Desktop application, USB driver, and free CharacterEyes software), Pen case with Opticard, two AAA batteries, earphones with volume control

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Ectaco C-Pen 20 Handheld Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)As a scholar who works with books and other printed sources a lot, I have long been on the lookout for an easy way to scan text into my laptop. I've tried using both flatbed scanners and digital cameras for this purpose, but I've found both to be awkward and time-consuming. That's why I was pleased to discover the C-Pen 20 - it's not perfect, but it does the job quicker and more easily than any of the alternatives.
PROS:
- It's easy to use; you just press the pointer to the page and a light comes on to let you know that the sensor is active. You then sweep the C-Pen from left to right at moderate speed as if it were a highlighter, and it converts the text on the page into electronic characters on your computer.
- The text instantly appears wherever the cursor on your screen is located, so you can use this device with just about any Windows program (e.g., Word, Access, etc.).
- The recognition rate is higher than I thought it would be; it's better than 99% on book-sized text. In practical terms, this means that you'll get one or two errors on average per paragraph, but these flaws are easily corrected (particularly if your spell checker highlights them for you automatically).
- It's small and easily portable, so you can take it with you to libraries and archives with a laptop.
CONS:
- The character recognition is sometimes thrown off by underlining and other marks on the page.
- You must use it with a PC or laptop that has a USB port (it doesn't run on batteries like some scanning pens).
- Even though it recognizes just about every major language written in Latin, Cyrillic, or Greek letters, it can't handle older typefaces (like German Fraktur). It also has trouble recognizing some symbols (such as footnotes).
- You have to scan each line of text one at a time, so it's not necessarily the best solution if you need to copy many pages of text.
The bottom line is that the C-Pen 20 has been an excellent investment for me, and I recommend it to anyone who's looking for an easy way to transfer printed text into an electronic medium.

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Ectaco C-Pen 3.5 BT Bluetooth Handheld Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)After seeing all the positive and negative reviews for the Ectaco C-pen 20, I decided to take the dive and buy the Bluetooth version of Ectaco's handheld text scanner for my wife. I was apprehensive because there are no reviews for this product, but figured we could return the scanner if it didn't work.
My wife uses the scanner pen to scan text and notes from her law school classes. She stinks at typing, so being able to scan all the text she needs into her class outlines is a *huge* timesaver for her.
Caveats: we are on Vista as our operating system.
Pros:
Easy setup (make sure you follow the directions; DO NOT plug in the scanner prior to loading the software).
Scans accurately and quickly when plugged in via USB; see Cons for the story on Bluetooth mode.
Picks up the following kinds of text without problems: highlighted texts, text in books (make sure the pages are flat, though), or underlined text (provided your underline doesn't go through the text; see Cons)
Picks up kooky symbols, like the ones I found in some of my wife's textbooks (deltas, ampersands, etc.)
Cons:
Doesn't scan text well if you have underlined text and some of your underlining moves up through the printed text.
Doesn't scan very well in Bluetooth-only mode. Essentially, you have about 2-3 seconds to scan your line of text before the light on the scanner goes out and it transmits to your computer. I have no idea what the heck the deal is, but if the Bluetooth part of this scanner is really what you're looking for, I would recommend you *not* buy this product.
Scanner doesn't seem like the most well-constructed thing in the world, *but* it has held up well so far, so that might be a non-issue.
Overall: This text scanner does just fine when it's plugged in to the computer via USB cord. My wife really does save a lot of time in her studies. But, as I mentioned above, the Bluetooth really doesn't function very well at all. I originally gave this product 5 stars because it did exactly what it promised, but I'm changing my rating to (a very generous) 3 stars now that we've found out that the Bluetooth part of the show is so bad. Hopefully Ectaco will fix this in their next system update?

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DocuPen X05 Bluetooth Scanner - 1 x USB - PC, Mac Review

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(More customer reviews)This product is, in a word, useless. In two words, useless and expensive.
I am a PhD student in History. I do most of my research in libraries. Some of these libraries do not have copy machines or scanners available, so when I found this product, I thought I had found a perfect solution for scanning multi-page articles from books and periodicals from non-circulating libraries. I am guessing this product was not designed with someone with my needs as a user.
For brevity's sake, I will stick to 3 fatal problems:
- Does not scan as .pdf. Why does this *document* scanner only scan to formats primarily meant for *images* formats (i.e. jpeg, tif)? I have no answer. WHAT THIS MEANS: you will NOT be able to scan multi-page documents as a single document. You will have to scan each page as a separate file. But wait, it gets better...
- The scanner stays "on" only as long as it takes to scan and save. After each file is done saving, it automatically turns off. WHAT THIS MEANS: Any time you have to scan more than one page in a row, you will have to turn on the scanner and wait for it to initialize. "Wow, that's crummy, but I can deal with that," you say...it gets better:
- Do you have a Mac by any chance? (I'm not sure whether this applies to PCs). You know that pesky message that pops up whenever a USB device is pulled out without ejecting it properly? The one that says you may have corrupted the information? WELL, since the device automatically shuts off about 5 seconds after the last active command, as soon as it mounts to your desktop, you have 5 seconds to get any files off of the device, or it will TURN OFF, resulting in an IMPROPER DEVICE REMOVAL error message, not to mention, you will not have your files.
THE SOLUTION: If you are a user with my needs, just use a digital camera. If you have a steady hand, the quality will be virtually the same. You will be able to take images of documents WIDER THAN 10 inches, and while you may not be able to capture them as .pdfs either, you will save a lot of time (I forgot to mention, each file takes 5-10 seconds to save with the DocuPen after scanning). Heck, I've been using my iPhone camera, and it's worked about a lot better than this product.

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