IRISPen Express

• Recognizes up to 3.15 inches per second and 1,000 characters per second
• Recognizes up to 55 different languages
• 7 User Interface languages ¿ English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch
• Reads text and numbers, including text on colored backgrounds
• Powered by the USB port so there is no need for an external power supply

after about 1.5 hours of practice and recalibrating over and over again, this is what the first few lines scanned from the irispen manual look like:

'he IRISPen may be the biggest sensation in computeriand since the mouse \ As efficient as computers are, you have to encode your data first. If you've ever If y-u'veever rekeyed text, you kn(ng and time-consuming it can be.... The IRISPen, a unique product for every computer user, offers instantaneous vaI at your fingertips. Text rec-!nit-o--her; you.q want it, w-en 1 The IR nsistoftw2 coE1P8--nts: a unique g--y-c-eHI'ell-si-escan=. ner and the powerful PCR-Il ("Pen Character Recognition") text recognition technology. The basic principle could hardly be easier: slide the IRISPen over a line of text and it is e :o your application in.st-ntJ-.as if-eyed in -ut up to 30 times fas!er. (JP to a 100 characters can be entered per second. Cut from paper, paste to Windows-: can you imagine a simpler way of entering text?

Is it worth it? Spell check couldn't even fix this disaster. I am a very computer saavy person, I don't think I am using it wrong, I think they just really haven't perfected the text recognition software. The one review above must be an irispen employee. I find it hard to believe right out of the box, that it worked perfectly...and then to encourage you to upgrade??? Laughable. You will spend more time fixing the scanning errors than if you just typed it yourself. Going back to amazon tomorrow!

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This worked once and then stopped calibrating, so it no longer functions. Iris claims to have customer support, but there is none. I have been calling and emailing them once a week for three months. I got one reply a month ago promising to replace it. I never got it. Their web site has little to no useful help. Iris ranks as the worse company I have ever dealt with. Pity anyone who gets a faulty pen! What a waste of money! I hate feeling ripped off!

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As a scholar who deals with a lot of rare material, I thought this pen would be a god-send in helping me transcribe material to my computer. The manufacturer boasts near-100% accuracy. I give it 40% at best. Sometimes, if you have a white piece of paper, clear, 12-point text, you can get 80% accuracy, but this is a rare occurrence.

I ended up spending more time "correcting" the text from the Iris Pen than I would have typing it out...so now my $70 "tool" sits unused on my desk.

I can't wait for the day that an actual pen-scanner works, but today is not that day.

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This entire opinion is entered directly into the amazon review page with the IRISPen using a hard copy of a file I printed with my inkjet printer, very typical, 12-pt, Times font.

I took the pen out of its box and read the directions very carefully. As usual, the Mac I took the pen out of its box and read the directions very caretuuy. Be sure to click the desktop image to bring up a fresh window with the IrisPen.

I read the bad reviews here, but I really need what IRISPen is supposed to do. I took the plunge and ordered it, bracing myself for the worst.

Calibration was a breeze; you just touch the pen to a sample of white paper. Then, without reading into the manual, I drew the pen over a sentence In an open book. Flawless! I went on to do the entire page, speeding up until I was going full speed, over one line per second, as fast as I could go and keep the pen on eourse. Three errors in about 600 words; a missed period and two "a's" seen as "11."

This item greatly helps my editorial work. No longer do I have to destroy books to get a few pages onto my flatbed scanner, nor do I have to re-type long passages of text from bound sources. The pen doesn't care about the font of the original, and you can select any font and size you want to be sent to the target program.

My opinion is that some people are naturally klutzy and may have difficulties getting the feel of this unusual tool. There is a certain slant and technique that came naturally to me, but might be awkward to someone who can't dance or throw baskets. There is a If you keep your eye on the arrow, allowing the line of text to become a passing blur as you drag the pen, it all works out very well. A little practice might help, although I needed none at all.

I highly recommend this item without reservations to any Mac user. It works better than advertised, taking into account I haven't even cracked the instruction manual yet. The PC instructions seemed quite geeky and were considerably longer than the Mac instructions, but I imagine those still confined to the tiny PC universe can probably do fine with IRISPen if they pay very close attention to the instruction manual.

I have read the reviews here and elsewhere about this product before I bought it. But I was in the need of something for quick little jobs more convenient than my flatbed scanner and faster than my typing and gave it a try. No regrets at all.

I do a lot of research with quoting of one or two paragraphs out of books or papers, mainly in German language. The IrisPen works very well for me in English, in French and in German (no problem with the umlauts etc.; I have not tried other languages).

One thing is important: you have to calibrate the pen very carefully like any instrument that needs calibration. Calibrate it with a WHITE sheet of printer paper, not with a slightly off-white like a book page or similar.

And you have to practice a bit how you hold it to get the hang of it. When scanning you should see the green light ALL the time, it should not flicker. It is named "pen" but you manoeuvre it different than a writing pen. If you keep that in mind you will be successful!

My IrisPen sits just behind my keyboard, as easily to grab as my mouse and I love it as a big time saver.