Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner from Digital Camera Showroom

The Ectaco C-Pen scanner is an amazingly convenient handheld data entry tool for use with the NTL-2Ch, NTL-2F, NTL-2Gm, NTL-2I, NTL-2K, NTL-2P, NTL-2Pg, NTL-2R, NTL-2S, Alpine-2Ch, Alpine-2F, Alpine-2Gm, Alpine-2I, Alpine-2K, Alpine-2P, Alpine-2Pg, Alpine-2R, Alpine-2S, Deluxe NTL-2Ch Deluxe NTL-2F, Deluxe NTL-2Gm, Deluxe NTL-2I, Deluxe NTL-2K, Deluxe NTL-2P, Deluxe NTL-2Pg, Deluxe NTL-2R, Deluxe NTL-2S and Partner 850 series devices. Letting you capture the text you need, just scan the pen over your favorite book, restaurant menu, newspaper, or anything else you can think of and the text will automatically be uploaded on to the device and translated to your language choice.

Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- User Rating:
Summary for Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- NOT PERFECT - JUST GREAT
Notes on Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- Lots of other reviews get into the details, so I won't bother. Let me just give my opinion of how I like the performance of this pen.

I do a fair amount of scanning and use this pen for spot scanning. It is even good enough that I have found myself using this pen to scan multiple pages, although that's not what it is best at.

The only challenge I have is when I'm trying to scan near the spine of a book. When the surface is not flat, the scan can go off into left field. When that happens, I simply go back - highlight the garbage - and rescan a bit slower and it seems to pick it up fine.

Some have said it is not that fast. I find it almost as fast as I can scan a line. I don't know what they expect from a pen scanner, but all in all this picks up very well, is extremely accurate, and is fast.

Someone else complained about having to carry the driver disk around with them. I don't have any problem with this either and use the pen on both a desktop and a laptop.

Keep the pen angle about right and you can scan up a storm.

I give it about 95% + accuracy (closer to 99% without spine pages.)

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Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- User Rating:
Summary for Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- Poor Software Compatability
Notes on Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- Useful and genererally works BUT the DC needs to be loaded each time the pen is used making it impossible to use on a laptop unless you carry the CD with you.

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Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- User Rating:
Summary for Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- Not perfect...but it works.
Notes on Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- I gotta admit it does make some mistakes, but it is a lot easier to use this product than to have to write evrything out.

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Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- User Rating:
Summary for Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- Works like a dream.
Notes on Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- I'm a psychologist and consult frequently on criminal forensic cases. That means I spend a lot of time reviewing mental health & legal records. The C-Pen is a Godsend for capturing the essential information in those documents. It's incredibly accurate, very fast, convenient, easy to use, and selective. You don't have to scan the whole page, and you can scan from bound or stapled documents without disassembling them. The automatic OCR conversion lets you scan directly into your word-processor or into a specialized note-taking program like WordPerfect Lightning.

As of this writing, there is a beta version of the C-Pen software for the Mac, which you can download from their site. I haven't tried the Mac version, so can't tell you about that.

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Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- User Rating:
Summary for Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- Like a charm.
Notes on Ectaco C-Pen Handheld Scanner ...- CPen is amazing. It takes a few minutes to get the hang of it, but after that it is great for text entry. Can read many languages, and has convenient set-up options selectable from a good interface. Trade hours of typing for CPen's few text errors. Fully functional with Vista.

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