5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Performs as Advertised
Date of Review: Dec 29, 2005
The Bottom Line: If the capability to take a scanner with you and use it untethered to a PC is an advantage to you, this device will provide you with acceptable quality images.
I purchased this device for pulling things from magazines and books. The DocuPen is simple set up, though the accompanying documentation was poorly written and seemed to not have been revised with information pertaining to the most recent version of the scanner or Windows XP.
I was able to scan pages with little difficulty and the resolution at the higher setting is acceptable, if not remarkable when the size of the machine is considered. Only when I wanted to see the images did things get difficult. I was not able to get the computer (ThinkPad T30) to recognize the device, despite several attempts at trial and error. The documentation was of no value in this situation. When I went to the website to see if the driver had been updated since the CD-ROM was burned for shipment, I discovered the Macintosh OS X drivers were available. I downloaded them to my PowerBook and opened the images immediately in Photoshop.
I could have called the technical help number and they may well have been able to get it working on the ThinkPad. Since the scanner works with my Mac, I would never use it with Windows anyway due to its designation in my world as a "necessary evil" platform. This means I do not get the use of the OCR software that came bundled with it but, to be honest, I have never seen OCR software that worked consistently on ANY computer.
