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Planon DocuPen RC800 Handheld Scanner
(Review) - Planon has long been at the forefront of handheld scanners, and they have just announced their DocuPen RC800 that works exceptionally well. Unlike the painfully tedious pen scanners, RC800 is a life savior and an efficient device with it's full page scan option in a few seconds, thanks to its stick-like figure that scans the entire page in a single sweep. Although it's not as portable as traditional pen scanners and can't be placed in your pocket, it's the best combination between portability and quality, both of which are equally important.
The design of the unit is simple and easy to understand with a row of blinking LED lights that depict appropriate actions, which showcase resolutions (100, 200 and 400 ppi), remaining battery life, storage capacity and color modes. You can also switch between black & white and color modes, and from color modes, you can either pick between 16-bit standard or 24-bit high resolution settings. In our testing, we could scan hundreds of monochrome pages (just like Planon promises), but only a couple of them at the highest resolution on the 8MB on board memory chip. RC800's ability to store only a couple of pages is a disappointment either way you look at it, but we don't suspect anybody is really going to be scanning for actual quality. The idea behind the portable scanner is to quickly and efficiently scan notes and book pages, and for that, monochrome is perfect. That's a great point to keep in mind, since even with high quality, you won't be able to pull off the original print look. Rocketfish Twister Laser Mouse Review Scanning, as we mentioned earlier, was quick, tireless and efficient. We set the scanner at the top of the book, pressed the appropriate buttons to initiate the action and slowly swept it down. We also tried various sweeping speeds to see how fast we could scan the page without completely destroying the quality, and surprisingly enough, you can scan the entire page within a few seconds. That's comparatively faster than what most scanners are capable of. Needless to say, Planon's portable scanner is much faster than standard flatbed units, since it doesn't require warming up.
Once you have the data on the memory chip, you can transfer it to the PC with Planon's included applications. You can connect the device to your PC via USB and start transferring, while it recharges. The PaperPort application also has optical character recognition capability that can analyze the text on scanned papers and send it directly to Microsoft Word. This will be one of the most useful features for students. Also keep in mind that the application automatically clears the memory after it's done copying the data to the PC.
Planon's DocuPen RC800 is as perfect a product as they come. Perhaps the only significant drawback is the 8MB on board memory, but even that could be upgraded to 1GB with a TransFlash memory card. Obviously, this scanner will best come in handy to students who could save hundreds of dollars on books by copying certain pages. But this long-term savings plan will come at a hefty price. At $254, it's not the most inexpensive tool in a student's arsenal, but considering it's usefulness, it will be money well spent. Click here to checkout the latest prices on Planon DocuPen RC800 handheld scanner!
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