Rating: 
Summary: Do not buy it!
Review: I strongly discourage you from buying this product. Driver did not install on my brand new Windows XP system. My husband, who is a professional Microsoft Systems Engineer with all the possible Microsoft certifications and 15 years of Windows experience, could not make the driver work. Customer support in US does not respond to any requests. Headquarters in Belguim does not answer the phone during working hours. I wish I saw all the negative reviews on Amazon before throwing money on wind!
Rating: 
Summary: Saves me time, I love it!
Review: I too read the reviews and took the risk; and I too, am sorry I did. My pen will be back on it's way tomorrow for a semi-refund. I was extremely disappointed with the IRIS Pen Express. Not only can you NOT scan text that is single spaced, but when you do, it suddenly creates a new language that resembles something like a child who just came up and started punching keys on the keyboard. You can use a piece of paper to cover the next line down, but I still got errors. Scanning is not new to me either, nor are electronics in general. I work with them for a living, so I am confident the error is on the half of IRIS Pen. I gave myself an easy two hours trying to train myself to holding it right, etc. No luck. Speaking of which, it's also hard to hold the pen at exactly the right angle... it won't work right if you don't. You also have to scan in a perfectly straight line almost; easier said than done, trust me. I was using the pen on a desk, on a flat surface... I even used their "test sheet" and couldn't get it to input the right words more than 50% of the time... it was just gibberish. It takes longer to correct the mistakes in the middle of a sentence than it does to type the whole thing out. The application does input data directly to Word as promised... but data doesn't mean "correct data"... it just sorta puts in whatever it thinks you scanned. I would guess my overall accuracy rate was not better than 40-50%.This is actually my first real negative review. I took a risk, and I payed the price. I should have listened to the other reviews here. Hopefully I along with some of these other folks will spare you the trouble of this device. Don't waste your time or money. You can buy a larger scanner, and scan faster with OCR, or heck, even type, that use this device successfully. Hopefully they'll eventually produce a more accurate product.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed in IRIS Pen Express
Review: I too read the reviews and took the risk; and I too, am sorry I did. My pen will be back on it's way tomorrow for a semi-refund. I was extremely disappointed with the IRIS Pen Express. Not only can you NOT scan text that is single spaced, but when you do, it suddenly creates a new language that resembles something like a child who just came up and started punching keys on the keyboard. You can use a piece of paper to cover the next line down, but I still got errors. Scanning is not new to me either, nor are electronics in general. I work with them for a living, so I am confident the error is on the half of IRIS Pen. I gave myself an easy two hours trying to train myself to holding it right, etc. No luck. Speaking of which, it's also hard to hold the pen at exactly the right angle... it won't work right if you don't. You also have to scan in a perfectly straight line almost; easier said than done, trust me. I was using the pen on a desk, on a flat surface... I even used their "test sheet" and couldn't get it to input the right words more than 50% of the time... it was just gibberish. It takes longer to correct the mistakes in the middle of a sentence than it does to type the whole thing out. The application does input data directly to Word as promised... but data doesn't mean "correct data"... it just sorta puts in whatever it thinks you scanned. I would guess my overall accuracy rate was not better than 40-50%. This is actually my first real negative review. I took a risk, and I payed the price. I should have listened to the other reviews here. Hopefully I along with some of these other folks will spare you the trouble of this device. Don't waste your time or money. You can buy a larger scanner, and scan faster with OCR, or heck, even type, that use this device successfully. Hopefully they'll eventually produce a more accurate product.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good, though, there are some issues.
Review: I've been using the IRISpen express for about 5 days now. I went into the purchase with my eyes open. I'd read the reviews on Amazon and knew that the opinions and experiences were polarized. However, with a major research project in the works I needed every bit of help I could get. So I decided to take the plunge and purchase the IRISpen from Compusa.
So far I am pleased, though the scanner is not without its deficiencies. It does a good job scanning in text, however there are limitations, but these can be worked around, and are understandable. Below are some of the problems as well as a few of the positive things I've found.
1. The scanner's OCR software cannot recognize writing that has been underlined by hand. This is understandable because, at least for me, these lines aren't straight and can intersect the letters, this will throw off the scanner. However, I haven't found this to be the biggest problem/
2. Despite the claims of the manufacturer the scanner does not always scan at 100% accuracy. Over all the accuracy is about 95% which is good enough for me, but not all letters come out.
3. Too much light can inhibit the scanning process. I learned this when sitting at Barnes and Nobles by a window. To much light dilutes the emissions of the scanner and the scanner does not have enough contrast, which is created by the green light emitted by the pen, to read and recognize the letter.
4. You need to be move your hand in a relatively straight line. When you look at the tip of the pen you see three lines, two at the ends and one in the middle. In order to effectively scan you need to line up the middle mark with the center of the line of text you want to scan. If you move in a line that is pretty straight the scanner will scan very well, however if you let your hand waver to much you will get gibberish. I see this as an understandable result, if your hand moves too much you'll get a line of letters that the OCR can't recognize.
5. It takes a little practice to get used to the scanning process.
6. If you are scanning from a photocopy and the copy isn't moderately clear then you won't get a good scan. Also understandable as I see it, the letters aren't complete and the OCR software isn't strong enough to recognize these letters.
7. Foreign letters. When the output language is set to English the scanner will not register letters with accents, such as `é'. This is one of the few bigger complaints that I have, but, it's not huge.
8. You can't scan too fast. If you move the scanner too fast then you won't read all the letters, you don't need to go slow but you also can't go too fast. This just takes a little practice.
9. The double click feature on the pen buttons is a little clumsy, but the buttons, are customizable to allow you to chose any keyboard command you want.
10. The scanner recognizes hyphenated words. If a word at the end of a line has a hyphen, and continues on the next line, the scanner recognizes that this is a partial word and combines it with the other part of the word on the next line.
11. My biggest complaint is that the pen software does not automatically load when you plug the scanner into your USB port. This is easily fixed with an icon on your desktop or toolbar but I've found it annoying.
12. The scanner must be used with the book or magazine on a hard surface. Otherwise the text will flex and corrupt your scan.
13. The size of the scanner sometimes means that you must hold your books at a 90 degree angle if you intend to scan to the end of a line.
14. Sometimes it does not scan well when going over a curve in a page. 85% of the time it works fine, but the other 15% you may get some corruption in your scan.
Overall I've found the IRISpen express to be a useful tool. I would recommend it, but I would also note that there are caveats to its effective use, it takes some practice to use. However, it does work well, and I expect it to be an invaluable tool for academic research. I recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: A pain at first but it seems to be getting easier.
Review: Initially I wanted to kill myself, this thing had a 80% failure rate on all words scanned.. After getting the hang of holding it properly (the guide wheel must be completely flat against the paper) the failure rate dropped to about 15%-5% of the words scanned.
It will almost always mess up when you are scanning the left side of a book and you reach the binding, and you must move it at a medium speed (to fast and all you get is gibberish)
After reading the website it looks like the IRISPen Executive software would produce better results, and they want $99 bucks for an upgrade (anyone know if it is that much better?) $250 total is a bit heafty.
I hoped to get a little better performance from a software update, but when I finally managed to find something on their site dated 5/2004 it turned out to be the same revision I was running but these files real dates where a little older (one was 3/2004 not so bad but the other was 8/2003 egh that seems pretty old for an update).
Anyway hold on to your software disk very tightly because I don't think you can just download the software again if you loose it.
Other small problems my pens buttons don't always work, you can't assign any key to it (I needed backspace). And when it doesn't scan things in right it can be a pain in the butt to correct it.
Also my pen lost communication a few times and I had to unplug and replug it in to get it working again.
Overall it was worth the price (even though I overpaid by $30 #$*
Rating: 
Summary: Type IT
Review: just not what I thought it would be. I expected the pen to pick up the words of each sentence as I scrolled it across the page.
It seemes that the button that is compressed to turn on the light just doesn't want to work all the time.
half way across the page the light turns on and then it reads a few words and then the light goes out and you end up with half a sentence.
After much frustration by my adult daughter, she laid the pen down and started typing the information.
I'll wait to make a final judgement after I get to try it, but I did try it for about 5 seconds when she was frustrated and it seems to not function like they say it should.
Not totally impressed with this item.
Rating:
Summary: Saves me time, I love it!
Review: The IRISPen Express saves me time and energy! I no longer have to type paperwork into the computer because I can scan it in to any of the applications I use on my PC. The pen works great and so far has scanned everything I've tried. I would highly recommend this product.
Rating:
Summary: A student's perspective!
Review: This really is a great tool. I scan so many things from so many sources a regular scanner + OCR would be too cumbersome. I use it wherever I go, when I work at a friend's place, library, my parent's. I tried the portable one but they are way too slow for me and all I did was to delay working on projects...not good. Without the IRISPen Express, I would have to retype by hand. I definitely found the best alternative. Could not afford the Executive version but it sounds pretty cool to have the voice read back. The accuracy is identical to the Express and the Express is less expensive. Great stuff! Every students should have one.
|
