C-Pen, Buy-Pen?

[Brad Isaac]

C-Pen, Buy-Pen?
A brief review and discussion of the C-Pen 600C
by Gary B. Garland, Esq.
editor's note: This review was originally published Nov. 19, 2002 and recieved 3806 views

Hi Gang,
It’s your old pal Gary back for more ranting and ice cream. Yesterday, I received my eagerly awaited C-Pen 600C. What is this wunderdevice, you ask? (Ask, ask!) Well, I’ll tell ya. It’s a handheld scanner and a lot more. But wait, you say! This is not a Pocket PC device. This doesn’t even have a color screen – what is it doing here? Read on, my impetuous friend, and learn… It is basically a small bloated pen shaped minicomputer with built in optical character recognition (OCR). Take this thing, run it along your newspaper, and you’ll have the newspaper in your pen in no time flat (or so the theory goes). I bought the 600C model, which is right below the top of the line 800C which I have never used. From my scouring of web sites and mall garbage cans, I’ve been able to glean a few things between the two models - there appears to be no difference in OCR speed or accuracy, and the size appears to be about the same. The 800C boasts a nice gold toned casing, more memory, a couple of extra functions like a built in calendar and the ability to beam sms messages to your infrared cell phone, and a couple of other minor goodies like rechargeable batteries vs. the 600C’s use of 2 AAA batteries.
Ok, what can you do with this thing and why would you want it? Well, if you’re reading this site, you’re a gadget junkie. Don’t be ashamed, it is who you are, so be proud, put down that pocket protector, move aside your latte, and whip out your C-Pen. My discussion will focus on my experience with the 600C - I expect the 800C to be similar. With the C-Pen and the included software (ok, I logged onto www.cpen.com and downloaded the upgrade), I was able to sync my outlook contacts via included serial cable in about 5 minutes. I scanned in some junk, and was able to beam it to my trusty iPAQ 3975 (my lil’ buddy) after I gave my lil’ buddy his daily soft reset. A short scanned note took about ½ second to beam. Though I did not try it, you are supposed to be able to beam into the C-Pen as well, which made me wonder, “Could I actually use this thing as a rudimentary e-book reader?” As the memory on the 600C can hold up to about 1,500 pages, I’d say yes! But I am jumping around so let me start with the basics....
The C-Pen has 3 buttons/controls - a toggle at the top that also presses in (to select, or power on), a curved almost recessed button by the bottom of the display (the default scan-on button), and a long thin button on the top side of the unit when held in the scanning position (the escape button). To better get an idea of what I’m talking about, hold a pen in your right hand (yes, you can configure for left!), and your thumb would naturally fall in the area of that scan button, while your pointer falls naturally on the escape button. Nice ergonomics, and you can reverse the functions of those two buttons. Scanning is a simple and intuitive affair - hold the unit flush on a piece of PRINTED paper (no handwriting recognition here, kiddies), hold down the scan button, and move along to the right at a nice clip. (And yes, you can configure to recognize Hebrew, moving from right to left - nicely thought out!) When you hold the scan button, you can see 4 small red light emitting diodes (LEDs) illuminate, and looking up and beyond, you can see the small camera above and behind.
My belief is this thing takes a raw “image” of the line you scanned, then does its magic - there is a short delay of a few seconds while it does the brainwork, and you can scan while it is still recognizing. Now, bear in mind, if you take a black and white raw scan of a single line of text, you are basically taking a “photo” which could take up 500 bytes or possibly more - when you convert that one line of text into characters via OCR, now it may take up only 64 bytes or less - plus, it is in a format which can be edited and printed by virtually any software application, versus the “photo” of the line would can only be pasted as a photo. I don’t want to get to complicated here - as far as I know, the buffer overrides the line just scanned, and there is no way to export any non-character scans, (i.e. you can’t scan a photo line by line with the C-Pen and export is as a photo). In English, I’m saying you run the pen over the line and it appears in the C-Pen display, ready for editing in a variety of ways, or ready to scan the next line. You can also scan directly into the contacts manager, and then synchronize with outlook - nice! Other features include the ability to “write” on a patterned surface, like any piece of paper with text, and have the C-Pen store letters in it’s memory in a graffiti like manner. From the reviews I have read, that is unwieldy and best left for, uh, nobody.
One of the coolest features of the C-Pen is the ability to store one or more dictionaries, and it does come with at least one. Okay, why would you need more than one dictionary? Well, some choices include the Miriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, some thesauruses (thesauri?) and possibly the most amazing of all - translation dictionaries, say from English to Spanish or French to German. Amazing! You are limited by the pen’s memory (the 800C would do better here), and also what you paid for. Mine came with the Collegiate dictionary installed, and the original software seemed to have about 10 possible dictionaries for me to install....but, as there is a butt in every day life, the upgraded software (downloaded from C-Pen) took those dictionaries away - what a tease! Solution? Install the dictionary of choice and then upgrade the software.
Ok, enough babbling - how well does this thing work? In my opinion, amazingly well - numbers and even strange names were recognized with amazing accuracy, and I was scanning things all over my home - including my baby! We are warned not to scan highlighted text, as different colors on the page will throw off the scanner. There is also a setting for scanning inverted text, say where the page is black and the text is white. The unit comes factory calibrated, and also allows calibration on the piece you want to scan if you’re getting too many errors.
Ok, ok, how well does it scan? I’m about to scan the following test paragraph and will paste it into the document. Which means I have to stop writing this article in my word processor, cut and paste into notepad so I don’t get automatic corrections, and can give a true account. I’ll print the test paragraph, and then scan it in....But you’re worth it.... Let’s see:
Test paragraph
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOGS. (123) 456-7890 the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogs. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their parties. Say this one three times fast: One smart fellow, he felt smart. Two smart fellows, they felt smart. Three smart fellows, they all felt smart.
Gary B. Garland is the best writer in the world. His mommy said so.
ok, here's what C-Pen had to say - and thank goodness it didn't crack at the end of the test paragraph!
Try # 1
Test paragraph ~HE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOGS. (123) 456-7890 the qu-ick )rown fox jumps oyer the lazy dogs. Now is the time for a11 good men to come^to^the art fellow, he felt smart. Two smart fellows, they felt smart. Three smart fellows, they a11 felt the best writer -in the world. Hi's mommy said so.
Try # 2
Test paragraph THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOGS. (123) 456-7890 the qui'ck he time for a11 good men to come to the aid of the:fr parties. say th-is one three times fast: One smart fellow, he felt mes fast: unc srncirt reliow, ne reir est wr-iter -in the world. His momwy said so.
The following was done on the fly, with the C-Pen hooked to the computer via the serial cable, and it scanned directly into this software:
rest paragraph QUICK BROWN FOX 3UMPS OVER THE LAZY DOGS. (123) 456-7890 the qu-ick , Now i"s the t-ime for a11 good men to come to the y tli-is one three times fast: One smart fellow, he felt fellows, they felt smart. Three smart fellows, they a11 felt ' B. Garland is the best wr-iter in the world.
Ok - what did I do? The first thing was to print out my cruddy rough draft of this cruddy rough article. The font looked a bit strange to me, as I don't use notepad as my native word processing software. Turns out it printed in the Lucida Console font, which looks like typewritten text, but not my normal favorite of Universal. Anyway, the printout was crisp - laser printer on a piece of reasonably white paper. The third scan was done, as mentioned directly into word with the cable. To make things even nuttier, just as I began my scan, a reminder came up in Outlook, so I actually scanned text into the snooze time window, requiring yet another scan into notepad. Not too bad.
On the other hand (I'm running out of hands), I could not figure out how to get those scans directly into my computer, and I believe to do so, you actually need to buy a $15 infrared adapter from C-Pen which is floating around e-bay. Instead, I beamed directly into my lil’ buddy. The first file beamed without incident, the second required me to make sure infrared receive was activated and took a bit of jiggling and fiddling. When the infrared beaming works, it's great - once the initiation was completed, the text beamed in something like 1/2 second. As I've noticed before while beaming to my lil' buddies, they don't seem to realize the scan is over while everyone else has gone back to the party - simply pressing cancel on the ir receive took care of that, and then I just activesync copied the text. Worth it? You decide. The numbers appeared perfect every time, and one of the scanning options is to scan tabs, which I presume would include spreadsheets. As for the text, I'd put the accuracy at very high, but certainly not perfect. I scanned as quickly as I could, bearing in mind I wanted the unit completely vertical to the paper with no red light showing, and I wanted to pull the unit to the right along the text as straight as possible without drifting.
I would put the pace for a roughly 7 1/2" wide line at a bit under 5 seconds per line. After I packed up my c-pen but before I shipped it to its new home, I read that this thing will scan in either direction. Ok, so what? Well, that means you can scan text from left to right, and then go down one line and scan from right to left, with no loss of accuracy – I unpacked the unit, tried it, and was even more amazed – it worked! I also did some surfing, and third party applications will, among other things, let you scan non-text and save it as a graphic – I don’t know if it would work for a diagram that was spread over several lines, but a single line mini diagram should work (and prove essentially non-existent and useless).
For my major use, I envisioned one of those few but critical trips to the law library, where I'll spend hours pouring through musty old volumes. Instead of a stack of quarters for the copier, I envisioned my C-Pen making quick work of the cases, including citations, and then pasting into my document. The reality is I don't believe the C-Pen will give me enough accuracy, even though it is probably close to 98% or so accurate. Also, when you consider the effort to scan something, and then correct, it just may be easier to type it in. I also envisioned how this could potentially be an aid for the handicapped, but I think the dexterity needed to use this thing well would be more difficult than pecking on a keyboard.
Regarding the dictionary, when it worked it did very well. A gripe is that it didn't show the word it was looking up until it finished looking it up - I would have much rather seen the scanned word to make sure the OCR picked up my correct word before making me wait a few seconds for the definition. Also, I don’t think you can actually dial in a word for lookup, but again, I am not claiming the same knowledge of the c-pen that I claim for anything Star Wars. And no, this will not double as a lightsaber, not even for lil’ Yoda.
The 800C allows entering text and sending vis SMS and your infrared cell phone. Will you use that feature? Probably not. Then again, you could potentially store a bunch of phrases/replies, and then beam the appropriate response, like to the boss, “Project almost done, should be on its way soon.” Note this would likely not be a good response if the boss queried you on how watching his dog was going…
Also, something strange. There is no protection whatsoever covering the opening at the bottom of the pen - while the guts are recessed, I was surprised there was no piece of plastic to keep dust and dirt out - perhaps it interferes with scanning (my belief) or perhaps missing from my unit (naw).
I have seen wild price variations for this thing. A good price is roughly $50 for the 600C, which I've seen up to $175 on-line, so watch yourself. E-bay has a bunch, and lately they've gone up to about $65 or so on average - Christmas shopping?
My conclusion? This is an amazing piece of technology with a very high degree of accuracy. It can store your contacts, and the 800C can store your calendar. I am not sure if the 800C will sync the calendar with Outlook. My unit would not sync my Outlook notes, and I believe the 800C won't either. The technology for the pricepoint is amazing. Even though the accuracy is very high, it is not perfect, and the error rate, combined with cumbersome scanning and uploading, took this from a must have device for me to a novelty which I am unlikely to use. This thing can act as a backup for your pocket pc (potentially even storing .cab files if you can figure out how. The C-pen can be a good adjunct for entering information into your lil’ buddy, such as business card information or contacts information, and can beam and receive text. Again, see my caveats above for accuracy. As with all things, your mileage may vary.
Pros:
· Amazing technology!
· High quality scanning
· Good battery life, 2-3 weeks
· Holds contacts, games, possibly an e-book
· Dictionaries - word look up or translation
· Can potentially store and transmit data files
Cons
· Cumbersome scanning can be finicky
· 98% accuracy still leaves 2% of errors
· (I) could not directly copy a file to the pc

[arebelspy]

One other upside of the 800C the author didn't mention: you don't have to hold down a button to scan, it has some auto detection thing or something.
I'm looking into getting a c-pen, not that I'd use it, but just for the geek factor. W?BIC
-arebelspy

[Gary Garland]

actually, i tested the 600c, not the 800c (which i would have liked to have, just didn't see one at a bargain price).
I thought the C-pen was nifty, though my buddy showed me based on my results, that my error rate was far higher than 2% (i was trying to be gentle).
it was a nifty and interesting gadget - but it didn't do what i wanted well enough to use.
Your timing couldn't have been better - I'm slated to review the DocuPen scanner - which is supposed to be an 8 inch long "pen" that scans an entire page in 4 seconds - we'll see how that goes....

[arebelspy]

I know which one you tested, but you failed to mention that difference when you said things like "The 800C boasts a nice gold toned casing, more memory, a couple of extra functions like a built in calendar and the ability to beam sms messages to your infrared cell phone, and a couple of other minor goodies like rechargeable batteries vs. the 600C’s use of 2 AAA batteries. " so I was just pointing out this feature of the 800C as well.
You also said "A good price is roughly $50 for the 600C, which I've seen up to $175 on-line, so watch yourself. E-bay has a bunch, and lately they've gone up to about $65 or so on average - Christmas shopping? " ut this was a year ago, one would figure priced have dropped. I only see them on ebay for about $100ish though.. is the price you quoted wrong?
I came across a much cheaper version of the same thing that supposidly works well.. It's by WizCom.
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_g...a80c3a573a5f4d
The QuickLink is $111, the SuperPen $125 and the Superpen Pro is $199 now (it was $150 last night at the cheapest place, so I'd check back...)
Only difference I can surmize: quicklink has 4MB memory, superpen has 6MB and dictionarys with foreign language translations, and superpen pro can pronounce english words for you. I think i'd go with the superpen cause it's only another $10 after shippping and taxes, and it can hold 3000 pages instead of 2000, even if you dont need the language features..
Do you have a link to the DocuPen?
-arebelspy

[arebelspy]

Nm, found it here: http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...y/TechReviews/
and some places to buy it on Froogle.
That one looks like not the one for me. With low accuracy (only 90% at best) and large operating cost (via short battery life) plus a $200 price tag, I think I'll pass..
-arebelspy

[Gary Garland]

the prices were right when posted.

[Hantra]

I think it would seriously take me MORE time to correct the CPen than it would had I not used it in the first place.