Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Bowling Green, Kentucky
Posts: 34

Any one ever use a C-Pen text scanner with a Visor?

Hi,

I am thinking about getting one of those C-Pen text scanners that can beam to your pda infared. I was just wondering if anybody as used one of them with a Visor and if so how it worked.

Thanks

Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 2

Re: C-Pen

Yes,

I have been using C-Pen for about 2 months. It works quite well. It beams scanned text to the Visor without any problems. It attaches to the serial port of a PC by cable, and with included software can insert scanned text directly into a Word document. It contains an English dictionary, but you can buy from their Web site foreign language dictionaries which allow you to scan in one language, and the C-Pen displays the translation in another language. As an academic, I find C-Pen invaluable for scanning lines of articles and textbooks into lecture notes or into literature reviews of articles that I am writing. I also like to travel to France, so I have the French-English dictionary. The quality of the scanning is not perfect, but my multi-purpose HP makes more errors in scanning a full page via OCR, then C-Pen makes with its line by line scanning. There is a technique which you can quickly learn to improve the accuracy of the scanning. If you need some or all of these features (there are more), I recommend it, and it does work fine with the Visor or any Palm device by IR beaming.

Registered: Dec 2000
Location: June 10, 2001 San Clemente Pier , CA
Posts: 211

I have every gimmick there is. Mini USB HD, Miniature spy cam, lie-detector...

So, of course, I fell for this one at Comdex one year as well.

To be fair, I can not speak of the c-pen(which I saw on the costco.com site for $78 awhile back). Haven't tried it.

But, I do own the QuickLink, a similar model. IT IS DISAPPOINTING! I read ALOT, and thought this would be great for taking parts of books for later review. Also, I attend school, forever & always, and this would be great for textbooks and study sheets.

It does beam well to notepad(memopad) in my Vdx/Prism.
It does connect with serial cable and work in Word.

But...

the OCR accuracy sucks too much for easy speed. And correcting it on the pen, FORGET IT. Push this button, then that button, move thru the alphabet to your letter press, move forward, thru the alphabet again, press, save, etc.
Also, font matters.
color matters.
forget paperbacks.

I have even updated the software on the website since Comdex, without much success.

Even my kids tired of it. You know THAT means something!

Sorry, thought you would want to know the truth. For more opinions, try epinions.com

__________________
"I cannot live without books." Thomas Jefferson