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PRODUCT REVIEW
The Planon DocuPen, not your plain old pen
By James Booth
Document portability is one of the foundations of mobile computing. After all, you're not exactly mobile if you can't get your documents to and from your clients and business associates. Sure, you can carry all those papers around in your briefcase, but who wants to carry around five pounds of paper in addition to a laptop? No one, that's who. That's where the DocuPen R700 from Planon comes in.
"This is a great little device."
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The DocuPen is a portable handheld scanner specifically designed to scan a full-width sheet of paper, yet remain portable enough to fit in your pocket. The R700 model of the DocuPen, shown in Figure A, incorporates a built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery that recharges from the USB port on your laptop, ensuring a charge at all times, but isn't required to be connected for operation.
FIGURE A
 
The DocuPen R700 portable page scanner from Planon. Roll over picture for a larger image.
Featuring one-button operation, the DocuPen can scan at two different resolution settings, 100 and 200 dpi, with enough memory to store up to 100 image scans. In addition, LEDs provide complete operational information regarding battery level, on, off, and error status.
Essentially, what Planon has done is attach a battery to the scanning bar of a flatbed scanner and wrap a housing around it. Guide rollers on the scanning surface help to keep the device rolling in a straight line while scanning. The Planon promotional image in Figure B shows how the DocuPen works when scanning a document.
FIGURE B
 
You can easily scan a full page with the Planon DocuPen. Roll over picture for a larger image.
No scanner is any good without the software to make it work, right? As part of the software suite, Planon has included ScanSoft's PaperPort OCR (Optical Character Reader) software for converting your scanned image into text. As shown in Figure C, you can scan and OCR documents directly into PaperPort, then send them to any number of applications for whatever format you require. Later, you can print the document if you need a hard copy for your permanent records.
FIGURE C
 
Planon included ScanSoft's PaperPort software for your OCR needs. Roll over picture for a larger image.
To shorten note taking, the DocuPen can also be used to scan books when doing research, as in Figure D.
FIGURE D
 
Scan books as well as single page documents with the DocuPen. Roll over picture for a larger image.
In addition to the method shown above, you can also rotate the book and scan the full page height all in one shot, and the PaperPort software will rotate the page and OCR it for you. "But wait! There's more," as Ron Popeil would say. You can scan artwork too, not just text. Bear in mind though, the DocuPen is only a monochrome scanner, so all your images, like a comic I scanned as a test, will be in black and white.
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