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April 12, 2006 Scan Documents, Photos And More . . . Anywhere
The new DocuPen RC-800 (PLANon, $299.99) portable scanner makes it so easy to scan text, photos, graphics and more - at home, in the office, library, or class – anywhere and any time you need a quick copy of just about any type of item. The DocuPen is ideal for copying references from a book, names and numbers from a phone directory, photos and recipes from a magazine, directions from a map and more. All you need to do is to turn the device on, set the scan type and resolution and slowly drag the scanner across the page.
The device scans a full eight inch width, and you’ll get the best quality scans by placing your document or photo on a smooth, flat surface (not always possible if you’re scanning from a book) and applying a slow, smooth motion with the Pen. This action took a little practice, but the easy roller action of the Pen made it a snap to learn. Once you’ve stopped the scanning motion, the LEDs on the Pen blink for a few seconds, indicating the scan is being processed into memory. The Pen then shuts itself off to conserve battery power. Eight
LEDs show the status of the scanner, and a red "X" blinks if you’re
scanning too fast. Memory and battery LEDs show amount of memory remaining and
amount of battery charge left. Three LEDs show what type of document you have
selected to scan, and the last two LEDs show whether you’ve selected a
standard or high resolution scan. Scanning can be done in several selectable modes: 1 bit black and white, 4 or 8 bit grayscale, 12 bit document color or 24 bit photo color. Resolution is selectable at 100, 200 or 400 dpi. The scanned images can be downloaded and saved in JPG, TIF, BMP, PDF or native PaperPort formats. The DocuPen is powered by a rechargeable battery. Depending on your settings, the Pen can hold up to 100 pages of text in its 8 MB of internal memory before images need to be downloaded to your computer. If your needs are for greater capacity, slip a microSD memory card into the scanner slot for an additional 128 MB, 256 MB or 512 MB of storage. These cards will give you room for hundreds of pages and plenty of photos. You connect the DocuPen to your computer via a USB cable. This connection recharges the battery in a little under an hour; it also allows for downloading of images and clearing of the Pen’s memory, getting it ready for more scans. The images are downloaded to the included PaperPort software which presents a desktop interface showing thumbnails of the images scanned. Several options for working with the images are available in PaperPort. The images can be easily straightened, since you can’t always scan in an exact vertical line, or they can be rotated in 90 degree increments. For instance, if you have to scan perpendicular to the line of text because of the book binding and the like, you can straighten the image out later. The program provides basic photo editing for red-eye removal and auto or manual enhancements, including brightness, contrast, color saturation, tint, speck removal and more. Captions can also be added. Special
features are provided in PaperPort to work on documents that you’ve
scanned. These features include stamps (such as "Priority" or
"Received"), a highlighter tool, annotations and notes. You can also
draw freehand or straight lines on documents and more. PaperPort also
includes OCR (optical character recognition). Simply drag the thumbnail image of
your scanned document from the PaperPort Desktop to the icon of a word
processing program such as Word. The icons are located in a tray at the
bottom of the screen. The OCR feature then automatically converts the image of
the text into an editable document, opens Word and loads the file for you
to edit. You can add icons for photo editing, drawing or other applications, and
when you drag a thumbnail image from PaperPort’s desktop to the
application icon, the program opens and the document, photo, or graphic is
loaded. A very convenient feature. The DocuPen can also scan images directly into any Windows application that supports TWAIN devices. For example, you could scan a photo directly into Photoshop and work on the image there rather than having to use PaperPort for the transfer. The DocuPen is a sleek, compact device 8.5 inches x 0.75 inches in size (about the size and shape of a bread stick), comes in seven colors and includes a cool leather carrying case complete with a belt loop. And, the DocuPen was featured in the 2005 Guiness World Records Book as the world’s lightest document scanner. If you don’t have need for color or grayscale scanning, the R700 DocuPen Pro is available for $210 and includes PaperPort software and OCR capabilities. The DocuPen RC800 was fun and easy to use, and we think will find many uses in business, school and even the busy home. |
