Docupen R700 - Ultimate portable scanner

Planon System Solutions Inc.'s new product, the Docupen R700 is the ultimate in super portable James Bond type scanning. See: http://www.docupen.com/index.html

I got this toy for Christmas and all my geek friends are jealous. That made it all worthwhile!

The Docupen is a plastic box about 3/4 inch square and 8 inches long. It has a single button and some LEDs on the top. The bottom has some rollers and a slot for the scan. You push the button, the bottom slot shines a bright green light and you roll the box over the paper. The image gets transferred into the 2M of RAM in the pen. That's about 100 pages worth for an average typewritten memo. It takes a bit of practice to move the scanner smoothly in a straight line, but it's not too hard.

Later you connect a special USB cable and upload the image(s) to a PC. You can store the scan in JPG, TIFF, etc. formats. The Docupen comes with the device drivers and PaperPort. PaperPort has been around forever, works with most scanners, allows limited image manipulation and OCR conversion to a Word or text document.

The scan is black & white and is at a user selectable 100 or 200 dots/inch. That's about the same as a FAX. It's not excellent image quality, but certainly remarkable for the portability.

The R700 batteries are recharged via the USB cable, which is a big improvement over the previous model. Battery life isn't an issue since you have to cable up to download the images anyway and that recharges in the process.

I paid $165 for it at Christmas, 2004. Shop around, the list is $200 and dropping. I made a storage container out of 1 inch plastic hose with end caps when it's in the briefcase.