Pen-sized scanner does colour, and fast
I’ve been playing around with the Planon DocuPen RC800 pen scanner, and I have to say how impressed I am at how it lives up to its lofty claims.
I’ve been playing around with the Planon DocuPen RC800 pen scanner, and I have to say how impressed I am at how it lives up to its lofty claims.
While relatively pricey (US$299), this 8-inch-long pen-shaped scanner can scan a standard 8 ½ x 11-inch page of text and graphics in colour in just four seconds.
You simply press a button on the unit, begin sliding it down over the text or images, and it then flashes green when it reaches the bottom of the page. Now, simply attach the USB cord, plug the other end into your PC and the image will appear inside the bundled Paperport software. I tried this product with newspapers, magazines, bills and business cards, and it worked flawlessly.
The DocuPen RC800 has 8MB of built-in Flash memory – which isn’t much when you’re scanning in 24-bit colour and 400 dots-per-inch – but it includes a slot to add an additional MicroSD memory cards, if desired. Or you can choose less colour or black and white to fit more on the pen before dumping it to the PC, deleting and starting again.
When plugged into a computer’s USB port, the power from the PC recharges the pen’s built-in rechargeable battery.
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Sounds great. I have seen these sorts of gadgets in the past but this sounds great. My one gripe however is the lack of memory with a $299 price tag. For that price tag you think they would include more than 8mb of memory.
I am surprised that there are so many spelling mistakes in this article.
I have one and it is pretty useful. Memory is a real issue though, so I bought a 1GB card. Two problems – the scanner software doesn't like the 1 GB card and keeps shutting down in the middle of the operation to delete old scans (formatting). Also, the software seems to recognize and latch onto one physical USB port and your computer won't recognize the device if you plug it into a different port
Another pretty widely recognized brand is type is the IRISPen pen scanner