Product Description

The IRISPen Express 6 is the most intuitive electronic highlighter. Simply slide the pen over text and numbers from letters, newspapers, magazines, faxes, etc. and they are instantly retyped right at your cursor in your favorite application. The IRISPen recognizes 3.15 inches (8 cm) per second and retypes 1,000 characters per second. The IRISPen scans and recognizes 128 languages and features the Smart wizard, which assists you with blurry text, numbers or small images. Whatever you need to scan, the intuitive wizard guides you through the process. The efficient USB connection enables you to capture characters from the largest variety of media at the fastest speed. USB powered, it doesn't require any battery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1541 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Iris
• Model: USOA400
• Released on: 2007-08-01
• ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows XP
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.70" h x 3.25" w x 9.70" l, 2.18 pounds
• CPU: AMD Athlon 1 GHz
• Memory: 128000MB DRAM
• Hard Disk: 1GB
• Processors: 1
• Native resolution: 640x480
• Display size: 669.2913385827

Features

• Portable, pen-size scanner with OCR recognizes 128 languages
• Recognizes alphanumeric characters, numeric data, mathematical symbols, currency symbols, and much more; scans small images
• Scans up to 3.15 inches per second
• Mac and PC compatible; powers off USB port
• Automatically recognizes mix of Western and Greek or Cyrillic languages; optionally reads Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean

Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description The Iris USOA400 IRISPen Express 6 Pen Scanner is a portable, hand-held scanner that works just like a highlighter. You simply slide the scanner over virtually any printed text, and the text is automatically scanned directly into your computer. Ideal for remote research projects or any task in which a flatbed scanner would prove too cumbersome, this pen-sized scanner operates at a rate of over three inches per second and recognizes 128 languages.

The Iris USOA400 IRISPen Express 6 Pen Scanner offers: Small size for easy portability. Automatic conversion of text on paper into editable text on the screen. Recognition of 128 languages. PC and Mac compatibility.

The pen-sized scanner scans at a rate of over three inches per second. View larger.

Fast Scanning and High Accuracy
The IRISPen Express 6 includes Optical Character Recognition software, or OCR, that is up to 100% accurate with 128 languages. Whether you're scanning print from a newspaper in New York, Istanbul or Ljubljana, this scanner will provide you with highly accurate results. It can even read wavy and distorted images, as well as colored text and numbers, and text on colored backgrounds.

If you have special text needs, don't worry. The IRISPen can recognize alphanumeric characters, numeric data, special characters, mathematical symbols, currency symbols, and much more. The IRISPen also reads virtually any font, in a wide variety of styles and point sizes (from 8 to 20 points), as well as formatting elements, such as vertical lines, separating table cells. The scanner can even scan logos, signatures, and other small graphics.

While the speed will vary according to usage, the IRISPen can scan up to 3.15 inches per second. You simply slide the "pen" tip across your text, just as you would a highlighter, and the text is scanned directly into the application of your choice.

Wide Software and Hardware Compatibility
The IRISPen doesn't care if you're a Mac or PC user. It's compatible with practically any platform you use. The pen connects directly into the USB port of a PC, notebook, Tablet PC or Macintosh computer. Powered by the USB port of your computer, the IRISPen doesn't need an external power supply and features an "idle" mode to save energy when it's not in use.

Use the IRISPen just like a highlighter and the text appear right on your computer screen.

The scanner software is easily configured. You can assign key board shortcuts and follow the intuitive smart wizard for the quickest and easiest way of defining your settings. It proposes a series of templates with pre-defined settings means for the reading of certain types of data: text, text from columns, numeric tables, etc. These templates can be either used as such, or modified to fit more particular needs.

Once connected, your options for the destination of your scanning is virtually unlimited. You can scan your text directly into Microsoft Excel or Word, into text files, emails--you name it. If you can type in it, the IRISPen will let you scan into it.

Scanning Everything From Albanian to Zulu
Amazingly, the IRISPen recognizes 128 different languages. All American and European languages are supported, including Central-European languages. Greek, Turkish, the Cyrillic ("Russian") and the Baltic languages and Hebrew are also supported. Optionally, the IRISPen reads Asian documents in Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean.

You can activate a mixed alphabet of Greek or Cyrillic and Western characters. This is useful if Western words pop up in Greek of Cyrillic texts (this is often the case with proper name, brand names, etc.). The IRISPen will automatically switch languages whenever needed.

What's in the Box
IRISPen Express 6 pen scanner, CD-ROM, quick installation guide, register card, user's manual, test sheet, and calibration sheet.

Customer Reviews

IrisPen
The several versions of this product differ in the software offered, the scanning pen, apparently, is the same for all. Iris Express seemed good enough for me since I only wanted to copy information from library books.

Getting useful copy requires a steady hand, a modicum of practice and, above all else, proper settings of the scanner. Operating instructions are both obscure and sketchy, so a beginner should stay with the manufacturer's default settings until some proficiency is gained. It helped, somewhat, to download the instruction file from the ReadIris website when I was ready to create settings of my own. Those instructions are inadequate too, but better than those packaged with the pen.

Once technique is mastered, character recognition is excellent, but the output text is plain, with no formatting whatsoever. That lack is easily corrected by sending the copy to a word processor.

Everything considered, I'm glad I bought the gadget.
Wugo

It depends on what you're doing
I edit a small-town weekly newspaper, and in slow times, I like to have a story regarding some aspect of the town's history ready to go in as filler. So I spend quite a bit of time going through yellowed newspaper archives, and bought this toy to see if I could cut down on my retyping time. The result? Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. I find you have to recalibrate every time you start scanning a different newspaper page, and that the scanner works better on pages that still have good contrast, which is to say have not become too yellowed. The good news is that I get about 95 percent accuracy on unyellowed newsprint, so it works for me then; the bad news is that the error rate greatly rises when the contrast drops, so that retyping is still faster on most of the old stuff. But, it should be noted, I'm conducting a Pen Scanner Torture Test; I find it works just fine on better quality paper, such as book and magazines. But always, always, recalibrate first.

With persistence it can work reasonably well
I bought this product with some trepidation, as other reviewers' opinions of it were all over the map. When I first started trying to use it, it didn't work at all well. My first few scans (each being one line of text) came out pretty accurate, but after that things just deteriorated fast, until before long all I could ever get was a big string of unrecognized characters, represented by tildes (~). I read the PDF manual, tried various settings, to no avail.

Then I contacted IRIS customer support, and they sent me a list of things to try, three of which actually helped quite a bit, and now I'm scanning along fairly happily.

The last thing they suggested--and the first thing I tried--helped a lot. I clicked File > Reset to Factory Settings. I've had to do that again, after I saw a deterioration in results. So I guess I'll just have to live with the default settings and Reset them every so often. Not a big problem for me, though it would be for some users.

They also said it should take 3-4 seconds to scan a 6-inch line of text. I had been scanning much faster than that. Slowing down helped.

And they said that a wavy scan is a big problem. I have found that by positioning a ruler about 3/4 inch below the line I want to scan works pretty nicely--I just run the scanner along the ruler as a guide, and it eliminates the wavy-line problem. (The thing doesn't seem to be bother if the line of text rises or falls slightly from left to right, provided it's all in a fairly straight line.)

I should mention that I suffer from a slight tremor in my hands, and so it is possible that some of my difficulties would not be experienced by someone with a steadier hand.

Bottom line: You can make this thing work if you stick with it. If, like me, you are constantly needing to scan in fragments of text, you will find it worth the trouble to overcome initial difficulties, should you experience them.