FW: Re: [Computer] DocuPen R700 Portable Scanner

I am way behind on making informative entries to my Blog. Sorry. Here are some of my thoughts on the DocPen R700 portable scanner.

I think the DocuPen R700 is right at the lower edge of usability (assuming I can get it hooke up and talking). A 200 dpi by 200 dpi scan is right at the bottom edge of what OCR can use (OCR really prefers 300 dpi by 300 dpi). Before I ordered the DocuPen I tried quite a few 200x200 scans on my Epson flatbed scanner. I fed those scans into my two OCR packages, one bundled with my Epson scanner and the other Adobe Acrobat Standard 6.0. They both did just fine, starting from newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and printouts from my HP Laserjet 1300. Of course, the flatbed scanner keeps everything straight and aligned, whereas the major defect in the DocuPen is that one can cant or skew the scan as one moves the DocuPen scanner down the page. The R700 has many rollers that supposedly help minimize that problem. When I cock the paper in my flatbed scanner the OCR packages continue to work just fine, so I don't think cocking is too much of a problem. Channging the alignment of the DocuPen scanner during the sweep over the page may give OCR fits, but I did not have a way to emulate that in my flatbed scanner (that I could think of).

-- Marc 09:44, Tuesday, July 26, 2005