At Last, a Practical Mobile Scanner

The 21st century just got closer to a true portable office suite ...

To date, the difficult element to master has been a reliable scanner that operated in a feasible manner for everyday applications. Besides quality of reproduction, the other problem with mobile scanners has been cumbersome operation, ie- line-by-line image capturing that had no solution for input of graphics.

Enter the DocuPen from Planon System Solutions.

Craig Crossman of Knight Ridder Newspapers has provided a comprehensive review:

"Looking much like a quality pen, the RC800 is actually a 24-bit color scanner. With resolution from 100 to 400 dots per inch, this incredible little 1.75-ounce piece of technology lets you take a full-sized page and scan its entire contents into the pen in about 4 seconds.

"Unlike previous pen scanner models that scanned in only one or a few lines at a time via the tip of the pen, the RC800 uses its entire body length to scan in the complete page. Just move the pen from top to bottom, or left to right if it's a bound book.

"As you move the RC800, little multicolored indicator lights tell you if you are moving the pen at the correct speed during the scan as well as indicating battery level, scanning resolution and available memory. The pen's dual roller guiding system ensures you move the pen in a steady direction.

"The RC800 comes with 8 megabytes of flash memory that can store up to 100 pages of text. Images such as color photographs can take up more room. If 8 megabytes is not enough for your needs, you can insert an optional Micro SD Flash memory card into the pen. These tiny memory wafers are available in 128- and 256-megabyte sizes.

"Once the page is captured, you can offload the data into your computer by connecting the RC800 to a computer via its USB port. While connected, the pen recharges its lithium ion batteries for the next time.

"The included PaperPort software lets you display your color images and has the ability to convert any scanned-in text into actual text that you can edit in any word processor. This is known as optical character recognition, or OCR.

"The application offers other features as well, but if you plan to do more sophisticated editing, the images from the RC800 are in a standard format and can be used by almost any other application such as Adobe Photoshop.

"The DocuPen RC800 is an incredible piece of technology that even I find a bit difficult to believe possible. But it is, it's here now and you can have it for $299.99.

"The DocuPen RC800 is available in seven different colors including Blue Streak and Crimson Pearl.

"Currently, it works with Windows only."