Rating: 
Summary: Did not meet my expectations
Review: I had recently purchased the C-pen 800c and it didn't quite me my expectations. Besides the poor, flimsy casing and quality of the pen, The 800c had difficulty trying to read the words or phrases i was trying to scan. I had to scan it 3 or 4 times to actually get the pen to accurately scan what I was highlighting and it still came out wrong. The calendar, address book and notepad were hard to input data and was very time consuming. Alot of joggling and scrolling in and out of menus and options. Not a very efficient tool for a business indidual on Time Management. The only good thing out of the Cpen is that it's compact and it charged up very fast. The pen got hot when it fully charged though..hmm..
Rating: 
Summary: Reviews Article
Review: I have read the reviews, both of editor's and customers', about C-Pen 800C. Actually, I had done a lot of homework before I brought it, because it was my first time to use this kind of stuff. Most of the verdicts gave it the highest mark, comparing to the older versions or other brands of mobile scanners. (...)
It is fair in enough to say that it is beyond most novice customers' expectations. The fxns are so comprehensive. Although majority of owners highly recommended it, a few of them were still disappointed. Concerning about the accuracy of scanning text, I could not find any problem, even in my first day used. It was able to recognize over 98% of words or symbols in the literatures, which might contain some technical jargons. It was also able to recognize some symbols that it did not include in edit/C-write, e.g. symbol for copyright. If U find difficult to recognize the words/texts, it is better to calibrate it following the instruction, especially after U change the text quality (normal/inverse). About the compatibility with the Win ME, I also found as easy to install as the other PC accessories. I installed it in Chinese Win ME of my notebook & connected with serial port. The programme ran very smooth & fast.
The memory capacity is 8M RAM + 4M flash memory. If U install the US dictionary (~4M) with the OS, the remaining capacity is less than 1M. Fortunately, the file sizes of normal documents are around 10-20K per page. It can still store over several hundreds pages. Accompany with the PDA/mobile phone(e.g.siemens 6688/S40), U can tranfer the files thru' IR beam to free its limited capacity. It means the capacity will be increased up to 64M-256M!
To be honest, as a user, it still has room for improvement. First of all is the outer case, golden & black coloured plastic case will let the professionals excuse to give up. If it was made of aluminium and had the choice for the colour (e.g. metallic blue), this would made it more attractive. Secondly, the position of Nav-dial is not good for using with one hand. Although, U can activate/inactivate the autotrigger or choose right- or left-handed use. I prefer to move it to either side of the pen.
(...) Anyway, it should be one of the best tools for the professionals always keep in their pockets. In next time, when U read a interesting article from the magazine/journal in train, jet or library, U can scan those useful texts/pages without keeping/buying them anymore.This stuff is not only user-friendly, but also enviromental friendly. Cheers!
Rating:
Summary: Great product! Impressive accuracy of the OCR...
Review: I have tried many handheld scanners before and always been little disappointed. Finally C-Pen 800C came and took care of all the worries! In comparison to the others in the market, C-Pen 800C is much smaller. I personally did not care about the new handheld functions (i.e. calendar, contacts, etc...), since I use a Palm device for that purpose; but they certainly are "bonus". The most exciting thing about this product is the accuracy of the OCR. Even with the small font and fast scanning, it does a great job. I am very impressed by the quality, and I recommend this to everyone that has been skeptical with the handheld scanners as I was before :)
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Service and Product
Review: I love this thing, but I hate its connectivity! Which is mostly either lacking or an immense aggravation. So, be very careful about how you plan to download your data, or you will end up owning a very nice and advanced piece of techno-junk. Getting the hang of the way to scan with C-Pen takes about an hour's practice, but it is well worth it. At first I couldn't get the C-Pen to read anything and I thought I had just thrown $200+ down the drain. Then I learned a few key things: if you are right handed, scan from right to left---don't worry, the pen will automatically transcribe from left to right. Also, I needed to develop a feel for when the automatic trigger was properly depressed, how to keep the eye flat on the page while moving the pen, and the necessity of making sure the page is flat (something of a bother at time with, for example, fat books.) I still have occasional mishaps, but the edit function makes quick cleanup and re-read easily possible. The OCR is as good as I get from my HP flatbed and I have absolutely no complaints, reading from a variety of texts ranging from early 19th Century texts to inkjet documents. Like all OCR products, one sometimes gets amusing results. If one is merely taking notes, fine. If one wants clean text, some editing will be required. But --- oi-v-voi --- the download problem is major. The factory product (I got mine straight from the USA distributor) will not work with Windows XP. The system simply does not recognize the pen's existence. Technical support (Sweden) advised me to download a patch from their website. My desk top twice aborted attempts to download this patch in mid-installation. Likewise, the C-Pen and my Palm Tungsten C are from different planets and will not connect via infrared. The factory's not very helpful advice was to please be sure that I had the C-Pen oriented in the right direction. Duh-uh! I have no idea what to do about this glitch, which is a major aggravation. I am saved by the fact that my office operating system is the old Windows 98 and I was able to connect via cable. Throught hat connection I easily and quickly download my scans into Word documents. The downside is that I do most of my work OUT of my office, either at home or elsewhere and it is an incovenience and delay to have to come in here to hook the Pen up. The bottom line is that --- knowing what I know now --- I probably would not buy this pen unless I were sure I could sucessfully download from it. I was accidentally saved from owning apiece of useless junk.
Rating: 
Summary: Careful! Like Making Love to a Porcupine
Review: I love this thing, but I hate its connectivity! Which is mostly either lacking or an immense aggravation. So, be very careful about how you plan to download your data, or you will end up owning a very nice and advanced piece of techno-junk. Getting the hang of the way to scan with C-Pen takes about an hour's practice, but it is well worth it. At first I couldn't get the C-Pen to read anything and I thought I had just thrown $200+ down the drain. Then I learned a few key things: if you are right handed, scan from right to left---don't worry, the pen will automatically transcribe from left to right. Also, I needed to develop a feel for when the automatic trigger was properly depressed, how to keep the eye flat on the page while moving the pen, and the necessity of making sure the page is flat (something of a bother at time with, for example, fat books.) I still have occasional mishaps, but the edit function makes quick cleanup and re-read easily possible. The OCR is as good as I get from my HP flatbed and I have absolutely no complaints, reading from a variety of texts ranging from early 19th Century texts to inkjet documents. Like all OCR products, one sometimes gets amusing results. If one is merely taking notes, fine. If one wants clean text, some editing will be required. But --- oi-v-voi --- the download problem is major. The factory product (I got mine straight from the USA distributor) will not work with Windows XP. The system simply does not recognize the pen's existence. Technical support (Sweden) advised me to download a patch from their website. My desk top twice aborted attempts to download this patch in mid-installation. Likewise, the C-Pen and my Palm Tungsten C are from different planets and will not connect via infrared. The factory's not very helpful advice was to please be sure that I had the C-Pen oriented in the right direction. Duh-uh! I have no idea what to do about this glitch, which is a major aggravation. I am saved by the fact that my office operating system is the old Windows 98 and I was able to connect via cable. Throught hat connection I easily and quickly download my scans into Word documents. The downside is that I do most of my work OUT of my office, either at home or elsewhere and it is an incovenience and delay to have to come in here to hook the Pen up. The bottom line is that --- knowing what I know now --- I probably would not buy this pen unless I were sure I could sucessfully download from it. I was accidentally saved from owning apiece of useless junk.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product, Lousy Support
Review: I recently bought the c-pen, and I was impressed by its versitility and how it managed to make my life easier. However, when I came across a problem with the dictionary and tried to talk to their technical support staff, I have been led around for weeks trying to get an answer. They bombarded me with automated responces that were of no help, and their phone support rings with no answer. The product is wonderful and a step in the right direction, however, if you get one, cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong with it.
Rating:
Summary: Best scanner available
Review: I recently purchased this model and could not be happier. I was previously a C600 owner and also have the Iris Pen Executive. The OCR is great (98% accurate) and seems better than the C600 (although the recognition hardware is the same). The screen is the best and allows multiple lines to be viewed easily. The battery life is adequate and will get you about 2 hours of constant usage. The trigger at the tip of the pen is not that helpful and I keep it inactivated. It has a pretty good scan time and can keep up with normal highlighting speed. There is about a 1 second turn around (OCR) time between lines (not seen with the Iris Pen). The advantages of this pen over the Iris Pen is that the OCR will at least try to recognize letters (ex: h replaced by n) while the Iris Pen will simply give symbols (^^^^^^) which can make retyping notes tough. I am not sure how it compares with the Wizcom products but I have looked at the Superpen and it seems more cheaply made. Also, based on the reviews of the Wizcom (alot of 1 and 2 star reviews) this seems to hold true. This model is a bit expensive ... and there may be a new model coming out in mid to late 2004. Finally, I am not sure why Amazon does not carry this product as it is really at the top of its class.
Rating:
Summary: C Pen - A very useful tool for academics
Review: I work in a school and since I got one, it has become more than the latest hot item, everyone wants one. I have ordered at least 3 more for other faculty.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Wizcom QuickLink Elite
Review: I'm measuring, first and foremost, ease and precision of scanning. Speed of scanning and ease of installation on the computer are, in my mind, about the same for both the Wizcom QuickLink Elite and the C-Pen 800C. They differ sufficiently, however, in the primary question of ease and quality of scanning. For the record, I bought both at the same time, with the intent of keeping the better of the two. You can just go ahead and buy the C-Pen 800C.
I have had one horrible experience with a pen scanner by Siemens, the "Pocket Reader." It was truly useless. It scanned so poorly that I just put it aside. By the time I though to return it, Siemens was no longer making it, and I couldn't get customer service here in the U.S.
The Wizcom QuickLink Elite is not so bad. It's serviceable. I don't think it lives up to its 95% accuracy guarantee, but perhaps meets a 90% threshold, measured impressionistically. It's interface is also reasonable and satisfactory.
However, the C-Pen 800C is even more precise, truly approaching 95%. Moreover, if you discount errors in spacing from this accuracy percentage, its precision is even higher. Whereas the Wizcom is just as likely to make a content error, misread letters, etc., the 800C's errors are more likely to be the absence of a space when there should be one. A rare missed space doesn't make you puzzle over the text when you come back to it two months later.
C-Pen is also lighter, and it's rechargeable, so while it's more expensive, in the long run, you'll save on batteries.
Both have comparable single-language dictionaries, though Wizcom has more built in or for free (C-Pen allows you one free dictionary, including bilingual ones). Wizcom is a only a bit slower on the uptake, but significantly more likely to warn you "Scan too fast." I've never had that from C-Pen, and again, the precision at any speed is appreciably better with C-Pen.
Both have comparable PC and PDA compatibility capacity.
Rating: 
Summary: 8MB Flash memory???
Review: I'm not a native English-speaker so I thought C-pen with English-English Oxford dictionary would be very useful for me. And it is. Every time I see the word I don't know C-pen comes in very handy. My husband is learning French so we thought we'll put on English-French-English dictionary as well. English dictionary we got is 3.25MB; French you can get is 1.09MB or 3.25MB. With 8MB memory we shouldn't have any problems. Or so we thought. Turns out, "The C-Pen OS needs to be able to store temporary files on the flash to work" - that's what customer support person told me, when I found out that I didn't have enough memory to put even a small dictionary on my C-pen. I guess the manufacturers of the C-pen conveniently forgot to mention, that in fact, you only can use 4.2MB of your 8MB flash memory! If not for this I would've given C-pen five stars but you can understand my frustration. If I knew I didn't have enough memory, I would've gotten smaller English dictionary as my free dictionary. So if you're considering buying C-pen, keep in mind that you DO NOT have 8MB of memory to use.
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