DocuPen Pen-Sized Full Page Scanner (DPEN-BW)

I bought this product with very high expectations. Silly me. No matter how many tries, no matter how much advice and valiant effort from technical support, no matter how many work arounds attempted, my computer and the scanner could not connect; i.e. the USB connection did not work. Shortly after I finally gave up, I installed a new digital camera, also calling for an USB connection (natch) with no problems at all. My suspicion is that the scanner is not at all comfortable with XP, which is on my system. But whatever the reason, the scanner failed to install, I returned the product for a credit, and commented to the technical support that "It simply shouldn't be this hard."

It is very difficult to get a decent scan without several tries for each page. With practice I was finally able to scan a flat document on a desktop, but the quality still wasn't great. The main reason I got this pen scanner, however, was to scan archives of very old documents bound into books. Since they're never completely flat, it is virtually impossible to get through a page without it shutting itself off. The manual suggests that for books you should start at the binding and scan left to right, instead of top to bottom, thereby creating a "landscape" document. But guess what - the scanner is only 8.5" wide, so you can't capture a regular letter-sized document in landscape format. I think it's a great concept, but for limited applications. With improvements, and possibly a longer "pen", I think the product has a lot of potential.

The DocuPen has been very effecient tool for me. I scan lots of receipts and forms and various other financial documents, something that is important to me at times is capturing signatures, which the DocuPen is capable of.I have used up the one set of batteries already and basically I scanned up to 220 pages which is 20 more pages than what the manual recommends.The time wasted on driving around to find a photocopying machine or flatbed scanner and actually doing the photocopy can now be eliminated with the DocuPen. Just take the DocuPen and capture your required document on the spot.Also getting the scanning technique down was not hard at all, as I got the technique down after 5 trial scans on a regular Word file print out. What I like about the DocuPen is that we are actually a part of the scanning mechanism, a really cool idea & concept.

Let's recognize it. It looks and feels great. Using it you look like a CIA agent working in a mission stealing secret documents from the Kremlin.As Paul Taylor from the Financial Times said: "it has the WOW factor". You use it and everybody turns to see you and your 007 gadget.Although it takes more or less 60 minutes of practice before you can venture to successfuly scan any document, I can assure you that after a short learning period you'll get incredible results.Of course this is not a 1200 dpi scanner so do not expect exact replicas but a workable copy that you can take anywhere anytime.The batteries' life and/or price is not an issue as this is not a replacement for a regular photocopy machine. This is an innovative device that could save your day if you need to get a copy of an important document and there is nothing around you that looks like a fax or photocopier. It simply solves another kind of problems, that's it.Under these circumstances battery price is not at stake (By the way, a pack of fresh batteries can scan up to 200 pages, which is fine under most general circumstances (again, this is not, and have not meant to be, a cost effective substitute of a photocopier)Lawyers, real estate agents, sales and distribution personnel, executives, researchers, professors, students, engineers, you name it. I am sure that you have been at least once in a situation where you would have given anything to get access to a photocopier. Well.....not anymore.I have been using my Docupen for two weeks and it is amazing

This device holds great promise, but doesn't deliver consistently. I'm a history grad student wishing to defeat the high cost and tedium of photocopying documents in the archives. The DocuPen was difficult to set up, the USB cable never worked (the conventional cable did), and the clarity of the scanned images was uneven. The biggest problem: it took repeated efforts to obtain usable images. Thus, before I could finish my work, I had to connect the portable scanner to my laptop to verify that I had captured what I came to the archive for. Often the scanner would stop reading the document before I had scanned it completely. Thus I had to scan the same item multiple times. The manual warns that may take "a bit of practice" to get the speed and steadiness of your scan-passes correct. But after four tedious hours of climbing the learning curve, I boxed it up for return, and went back to the photocopier. Next trip, I'll go back to dragging a flatbed scanner into the archive.

I am a lawyer that has found the DocuPen to be a very useful device in my field. I am able to capture important documents in the courtroom, at a client's home/office, and even in the library for legal research purposes. It also came in handy for in office use when one of my client required a document to be e-mailed immediately, but we did not have a flatbed scanner, so therefore we used the DocuPen to scan the documents and send it via email using the free software provided - ScanSoft PaperPort. It also has a neat OCR feature in the software that can convert text based documents into editable text in Microsoft Word. The DocuPen was very easy to get a hang of once you get the scanning technique down. I have since then purchased more DocuPen units for my team at the office.