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Pen-Sized Color Scanner Reviewed
moto writes "ThinkComputers has a review up of a cool pen-sized scanner, the Planon RC800 Portable Color Scanner. From the article: 'I've noticed one major constant about most technology, as it changes it gets smaller. Take scanners for instance, I have a few of them, an older one that is pretty big, you could use it for a computer case if need be, if I lined them up in order of age you would find that they get smaller as they get newer. Today for review I have the smallest scanner yet, it's from Planon, and they actually made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.'"
While a handheld pen-sized scanner may intrigue, it's not very new, not even for this particular device. If you go to the amazon.com review of this device, and look and see the oldest review for this device is in October of 2004!
Additionally, while there are only fifteen reviews, the average is only 3.5/5 stars, enough of an indicator (to me at least) this isn't exciting or very interesting technology (for the record, a running theme at amazon seems to indicate a klunky package with difficult to use software and controls). Also fifteen reviews over a 15 month period would indicate a product that isn't moving. Perhaps this review is a nudge to try and get the product moving?
"I've noticed one major constant about most technology, as it changes it gets smaller."
Hey baby..
I'm just more technologically advanced.
... scanner in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? :D
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See, like, 'cause I just saw this movie Firewall where Harrison Ford transferred 10,000 bank account numbers from a screen into digital data in an iPod in, like, three minutes, and I think this could really cause a problem because, you know, people could totally scan all sorts of secure data virtually instantaneously and then use it to, say, steal a hundred miiillion dollars.
And he even did it with the scanner used in a Fax machine. Totally awesome techie feat, not to mention impossible. The greatest line ever, though: "Ten thousand songs, ten thousand account numbers. It can't tell the difference." I fell out of my chair.
My little site.
This is a great way to start moving even further from the paper world. Every one or two-page document you get in class/the office you can quickly scan with a pen, then upload wirelessly to your computer. The day this becomes effective and viable--and the software for converting scanned images to text/pdf/.doc files becomes more accurate--we'll start to see an even greater shift away from traditional documents.
Already, most handouts in class can be found online. This will just make it even easier to keep everything on your computer for easy retrieval--especially through SEARCH (spotlight, google DS, vista, etc.).
Can't wait till they technology is cheaper and more efficient.
I got a mental image of some guy walking into a book store, picking a book and pretending to read it while he scanned the entire thing over a half hour and a cup of coffee...
The page you linked to is the R700. This article is a review of the R800.
Now I have an 8.5 x 11 scanner that does 2400 dpi in a single pass and it only cost me $89 on sale at Best Buy.
Amazing what happens in a dozen years...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You've linked to a review of the R700. The R700 is a monochrome unit.
This is the R800. The R800 is a colour unit with higher resolution. They also claim to have improved the tracking system and software so it isn't so fiddly.
The difference in utility is pretty major. I wouldn't bother with a monochrome pen scanner, but I would love to be able to quickly scan visual reference material out of art books quickly. They tend to be expensive and have low print runs, but photocopying for reference when doing a painting is fair use.
If you look carefully at a typical $100 scanner, you'll realize that the electronics contribute very little to its size. Most of the bulk is due to the mechnical stuff that holds the paper in place and moves the sensors across it.
That kind of mechanical engineering has clearly hit its fundamental limits in terms of size. To get a real breakthrough, you'd have to find a way to do without moving the sensor over the image. You can already image a piece of paper with a digital camera — and some digital cameras are very tiny indeed. But they don't include the ability to correct the image for the arbitrary positioning of the camera. Invent that, and you'd have a handheld scanner worth talking about.
I've noticed one major constant about most technology, as it changes it gets smaller.
I'm confused now. Is it a constant, or isn't it?
ANYONE who claims more than months or even weeks uptime in XP isn't applying patches!
What about the people who did apply patches and are lying? Perhaps "claims" should be replaced with "experiences" or "has".
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
This article draws some parallels from the article on "non-PC" science projects. yes, its pretty and shiny, it a portal for new, innovative things to come, but other than that, its just a raiting grabber. yawn.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
James bond could use one of these to quickly copy classified documents and so on. It seems more like a spy gadget than an office gadget but neat nonetheless.
This would be useful for those doing research in libraries' historical records. They rarely lend out their older collections, and in some cases won't let them be scanned either. This could be a useful covert way of doing just that.
I read that worng the first time around!
you could easily fit 10,000 account numbers into a tab-deliminated text file, and it'd only take up a few megabytes.
Exactly how many digits is your bank account number, and why the hell do you bank there?
Honestly, is there anyone over the age of 12 that's still impressed with anything in the Guiness Book of World Records? And even if so, why is a record of "Worlds Smallest Scanner" even worth recording? It'll be beaten as a matter of course when the R900 comes out.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Does anybody know if it works with Linux or Mac? Manufacturer's web site has only Windows as a supported system.
This device was being sold on retail outlets like compussr and such for the past year or so and the reviews are dime a dozen. I am not sure how this article got past the scrutiny of slasdot editors while they slash stories of much better content left and right. He/she must be a good friend to one of the editors here I am thinking {grin}...
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Or maybe they are manually applying them through a memory editor! Yeah that's it!
The link to the review is for a previous model, the DPEN-R700, the article refers to the RC800, which seems to be far more capable than its predecessor.
I work with scanners regularly and all the destop scanners we recommend to our clients cost around $1000 or more. Dedicated 8hr-a-day scanners run close to $5000. We don't make a dime on hardware, so we're not trying to squeeze cash out of anyone. Just try a $1000 scanner like a Kodak i40 someday and you'll see why anyone who depends on a scanner for a business shouldn't consider anything inferior.
Now, if you show me a pen scanner that makes images good enough to ORC or recognize a bar code and I'll sell a million of them for you. But for now, I love to have an ultra-reliable, self-feeding, double-sided, 60+ ppm scanner whenever I need to scan anything worthwhile.
All I want from scanner manufacturers is come up with a model of scanner that can scan _multiple_ pages, from _both sides_, _automatically_, bundled with decent OCR software and archiving software. I'd just feed all the paperwork I receive in a week into it and have a searchable archive. Unfortunately, the industry is run by morons and it's not gonna happen.
... I would love one of these. Being able to scan pages and books anywhere with minimal fuss would be a dream come true for me. The only downfalls i can see are highish price and flimsy construction. Might wait a bit to see if there are any copy-cat products that do a better job.
Today for review I have the smallest scanner yet, it's from Planon, and they actually made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Designers seem to keep making devices smaller and smaller just because they can. Some devices are becoming so small it's making them virtually unusable.
Future Review: New scanner released that's the size of a needle, unfortunately the review has been delayed because we dropped it in a haystack.
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est - Sir Francis Bacon
Took me a while because in English it is spelled gynaecology =)
.... er .. what ?
Such a shame the new world eschewed proper spelling in favour of
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Better.
Cheaper.
Easier to Use.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Since the boring day on which I noticed the space under the screen of my Inspiron 700m notebook is just large enough to pass a sheet of paper I have wondered if it would be possible for Dell or some intrepid DIY'er to install a scanner in the afore-mentioned space. Perhaps this little pen will spur somebody on.
Go into a Border's Books or a public library for that matter. Grab some of the latest hardback bestsellers or classic reprints. Sink into a plush chair with a Jamba Juice. Scan the entire book word for word, image for image into the pen. Go home and download it. Come back 1 day a week for the next 6 months and repeat.
You could scan by author, subject, heck even personal request. PDF it. Upload it. Sell it. Profit.
Boo-ya.
"To get a real breakthrough, you'd have to find a way to do without moving the sensor over the image. You can already image a piece of paper with a digital camera -- and some digital cameras are very tiny indeed. But they don't include the ability to correct the image for the arbitrary positioning of the camera. Invent that, and you'd have a handheld scanner worth talking about."
... perfect for photographing purloined letters.
;)
It's not perfect, but my camera -- a Casio EX-Z120 -- actually has exactly this feature built in. Casio calls it "Business Shot"; there are a few variants of this mode built in to the camera (though why it needs to be different for business cards vs. letter-size, I don't know). Upshot: If you take a shot, against a sufficiently contrasty background, of a basically rectangular item, such as a piece of paper with printing on it, the camera attempts to locate the edges and square things up. When I say "not perfect", I'm being kind -- it's easily confused, as a matter of fact, and I find this mode is actually more interesting for creating purposeful distortion than useful in its intended role; Ah, well. Also, this mode forces you down to 1600x1200 resolution -- which, if you're scanning a letter-size document for its content (rather than for the archives of an art museum or something), is probably not too harsh a limitation.
So -- the technology, though as yet in its early phases, is already out there, and will surely improve. Minox* should license that algorithm from Casio and start selling digital Minox cameras of the tiny shape favored by spies
timothy
*I just noticed a low-end Minox digicam the other day which looks very close in size to the EX-Z120, in fact, and also uses AA batteries. Maybe it's made in the same factory
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http://sprite.student.utwente.nl/~jeroen/projects/ mouseeye/
I think you could get away with a 256x256 sensor (real cheap IC) that is hooked up with a plastic lens to read a 1/2" square area at roughly 300dpi.
It could break the image up into tiles, and autocorrelate them as you scan to build up the document on the fly in the onboard memory. An ARM core with a few meg of onboard RAM and flash, maybe a DSP, it shouldn't take much to make that possible in a mouse-sized, lightweight device.
Put a few LEDs on top that tell you where to move the "mouse" to get full coverage of the page since you don't have a realtime preview.
Instructions might say: "Move mouse in back and forth scanning motion over text you want to capture. Do not rotate mouse for best results."
Of course you could omit parts of the page that are blank or you don't want to copy.
What do you think about that?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Did anyone else read the subject as Penis-sized color scanner reviewed? I got excited and thought, "Wow! they're getting that small now!". Then I realized I was wrong after reading it again and returned to my normal depressed state of denial.
A doctor's office that I occasionally do work for has a Canon scanner up at the the front desk which they use to scan, from what I gather, all of their patient-related documents into a computer.
It's a dandy little box. You just put a stack of papers into it, and it scans them - both sides at once. It doesn't seem to care much about bent corners, or creases, or folds, or slightly-off sizes. And when it does begin to misfeed for whatever reason, it has the remarkable ability to shake the paper stack until things begin feeding properly again.
And, IIRC, it scans at some insane real-world speed of something like 15 double-sided pages per minute, including occasional pauses to let the computer/interface catch up.
They don't bother with OCR there (and last I checkd, OCR was generally still pretty sucky), so I cannot speak of its performance in that area. But the hardware sure seems to have existed, at least, for the past year or so.
Kid-proof tablet..
>When it is bad, it is still good.
Only if you're not getting much of it..
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I suppose I'm the only person who thought that said penis-sized color scanner. It was a boggle trying to figure out why that would be the unit of measure and who would calculate the standard.
You could spin that out to suggest there was a replica at some government office, made out of titanium or something, that was the internationally recognized standard. That could help out anyone getting caught with a vibrator in their desk. They could simply explain that was their 1.0 reference standard. Think of it as a ruler.
I bet Bill O'Reilly wishes he would have thought of that now, huh?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
... and compact enough to keep on my desk. $1K+ behemoth is OK for the office, but at home I need something smaller an less expensive.
You can already image a piece of paper with a digital camera -- and some digital cameras are very tiny indeed. But they don't include the ability to correct the image for the arbitrary positioning of the camera. Invent that, and you'd have a handheld scanner worth talking about.
My el-cheapo 6MP casio (QV-R61) digital camer can take photo's of business cards, whiteboards, etc, AND it processes the image with a special mode that straightens up edges and curves, due to my crooked eye, and the "fish eye" syndrome (don't know what it's really called).
It cost me AU$600 about 15 months ago, now it's down to AU$341.00
Admitedly it's more a camera than a scanner, so this mode could do with a bit of work, but it works good enough, and its portable. I'm more likely to have the camera around when I happen to see an interesting document in a museam, say, than whip out my portable scanner! And it doesn't require me to touch the original either...I remember most affordable scanners in the mid 90s being hand-held.
Those looked a bit like a T-shaped overgrown mouse (now figure that out) and required at least two passes to scan an A4 sheet.
Done already, cheap, and really pretty good.
$428.36 from Amazon, maybe cheaper elsewhere
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00097BXHI/ref=nThe FUJITSI SCANSNAP FI-5110EOX2
Duplex, Color, Auto sheet feeder, 600DPI Scans to PDF or Word etc, including OCR software.
it can even scan A3 documents in one go, if you fold them first.
Can't really beat it for the price.
The only major difference between this and the Fuji scanners costing twice the price is that these models are (intentionally?) crippled by lack of TWAIN drivers, which can be a pain.
Anyone else thinking of Isaac Asimov's short story "The Dying Night"? Where scientists use a form of camera, that's basically a hand-held scanner device, in order to store images of written paper? Asimov basically had this device down pat, except he imagined it being mechanical in nature, with film as its storage medium, instead of digital, with a computer chip.
Now I can send my secret spy documents back to the Kremlin with ease.
My camera does. It's a Casio Exilim EX-S100, which is now a discontinued product I believe. I would assume current poducts in the line have the same feature.
It's intended to take pictures of whiteboards and business cards and an angle, and does an admirable job of finding the edges and correcting for perspective. The camera itself isn't high-enough resolution to do a great job with a sheet of paper, but for smaller items or things with large print (as I said, business cards and whiteboards) it does a pretty good job.
Then again, other people have responded telling you the same thing. It's here, and it works fairly well for what it is. Take a look sometime.
± 29 dB
The review posted is for the RC800, not the RC700 on the amazon site.
I've got an RC700, and the only difficult thing about it was the basic instructions being unclear, with no simple explanation on how to clear the memory.
Other than that, it has come in quite handy, and even intimidating...when looking up public records at government offices, the clerk tends to panic when you whip it out of your sleeve and start scanning the paperwork into it. Especially when it is one of those "cannot leave the counter to view" documents...
Next week, I have an appointment with my HMO to review my records; I'm going to scan my entire medical history folder for placement into a thumb drive, so it's available in case of accident outside my local provider.
Wish I had known the RC800 was due out, but I'm happy with the RC700.
"Eustace? Eustace? Are you there? Are you there?" = John Leeming