C-Pen 600 – What I hear on the support desk
Written: Aug 27 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: small, durable, easy to use, integrates with Windows Explorer
Cons: Maybe the price for some
The Bottom Line: Get one, try one, if it doesn't work, call me
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| emcphers's Full Review: C-Technologies C-Pen 600 Handheld Scanner |
I have worked for a company that does help desk support for many different technology firms for the past 4 years. One of the products that I was actually more in depth with than any other was the C Technologies C-Pen line.
There are actually seven different models of the C-Pen that are or were produced by C Technologies:
o C-Pen 200 - 512k RAM - Infrared
o C-Pen 600 - 4 MB RAM - Infrared
o C-Pen 800 - 4 MB RAM - Infrared - Rechargeable Battery
o C-Pen 600c - 4 MB RAM - Cable and Infrared
o C-Pen 800c - 4 MB RAM - Cable and Infrared - Rechargeable Battery
o C-Pen 600 MX - 4 MB RAM - Infrared
C Technologies is a “gadget” company that is located in Ideon Research Park in Sweden. They produce quite a few different gadgets, this being their “specialty”.
What’s a C-Pen?
I’ll explain their purpose first, and then I’ll talk about this particular model.
A C-Pen is, in general terms, an electronic highlighter. You scan typed text on paper, books, magazines, etc. and it OCR (Optical Character Recognition), or translates the scanned text, and puts it onto the digital screen of the C-Pen. You can then save the file as a text file, edit the file on the pen, translate the file to another language, or beam the file to your Palm Pilot.
All of the C-Pen’s will read 5-22 point fonts and can even be upgraded to read bar codes.
Why would I want one?
My first though was, “Yeah, cool gadget, but so what! Why would I want this?”
My answer was soon apparent. I took the C-Pen home with me and realized that the possibilities were endless. Then when the calls started coming into our help desk, people were using it for any of the following:
o Students in college for study notes
o Lawyers doing research for cases
o Field Technicians for addresses of their stops for the day
o We even had a man that was scanning very, very old books so he could preserve their words forever on the computer.
It is so much easier than typing out every word and sentence onto the computer. My curiosity was peeked, plus it’s another gadget to add to my arsenal.
The C-Pen 600 - Basics
The C-Pen 200 and the C-Pen 600 were actually the first pens that were introduced to us when C-Technologies signed the contract for us to do their technical support. You scanned and saved the file, and then using an infrared device (The Extended Systems JetEye IR), you could transfer it to your computer or laptop.
The C-Pen 600 includes:
C Read - which allows the ability to scan and save text
C Direct - This function allows you to scan a document, one line at a time, and immediately transfer it into your PC Document (Excel, Word, Access, WordPerfect, etc.) wherever the cursor is located. This is nice when filling in spreadsheets.
C Dictionary - You get one free dictionary with a purchase of a C-Pen. You load the dictionary through the Infrared port (2-3 MB). You have many choices including: English, Thesaurus, English - French, English - Spanish, etc. The translating dictionary will take the text you scan and translate it into the other language, and vice versa.
C Address - Address book on the pen itself. You can sync this address book with your Outlook address book (VCF files).
C Write - This allows you to write/edit documents on the pen, without having to transfer to the PC to edit, although much easier.
C Beam - Will “beam” saved files/address to your Palm Pilot or other PC that has an Infrared Device. This allows you to send files to computers that do not have the C-Pen software installed.
Storage - Probably one of the “coolest” features of the pen, this utility will allow you to transfer any files to the pen. You can then take the file to another computer and “beam” it over there. It’s basically like carrying around a 6 MB floppy disk.
The C-Pen 600 runs on 2 AAA batteries and doesn’t seem to suck them dry as a lot of electronic gadgets do. It will hold 150 addresses and 1500 pages of text on the 6 MB of memory capacity. This is without a dictionary loaded of course. The dictionary will take up almost half of the available space.
The C-Pen will scan text in 12 different languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Numbers Only.
You can also change the text on the Pen to display in 7 different languages: Deutsch, English, Espanol, Francais, Italiano, Nederlandse, Svenska. This will allow an English-speaking traveler to read the pen in English, scan a French menu for instance, and then use the French-English dictionary to translate it to English. This might be a good idea in France; you never know what you might be about to eat.
The C-Pen allows you to switch it from right to left-handed. It also allows you to change the text setting to read black ink on white paper, or white ink on black paper.
The C-Pen 600 is fully upgradeable (Operating System). You simply download the new OS and run the installation utility on your computer. This will transfer it over you infrared device to your pen.
The Windows Software
C-Win is the Windows software that allows you to communicate with the C-Pen. It is very easy to install and there is not much configuring that the common user has to perform. You simply run the installation routine and it asks:
o What type of pen you have
o Whether you us Infrared or Cable
It then installs to the hard drive of your computer. It utilizes the Explorer function of your Windows software. When you open Explorer you will see the C-Pen listed allowing with Network Neighborhood, My Computer, etc. The desktop icons are My C-Pen and C Direct.
When you open My C-Pen it connects through the Infrared to the C-Pen 600 and the syncs all the files. You then will see all the icons on the screen that you have on your pen. You can then open up the files, and copy them to your computer, delete them, edit them, etc.
The software is currently supported on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT 4.0, and just recently, MAC OS.
Durability
All models of the pen are the same size and shape. They each are a different color, so to tell them apart. The “wheel” at the base of the pen is used to power the pen on and to scroll through the icons on the pen. There is a scan button just below the LCD on the pen. Just under the wheels is the Infrared Port, which is covered with a dark screen.
The scanning end of the pen has 4 pencil tipped size digital cameras that take snap shots of the text for the C-Pen to OCR and put on the screen. This is probably the only “dangerous” part of the construction of the pen. These cameras sit about a half-inch inside of the pen, but the end of the pen is open. You could actually reach in and touch these cameras. However, this is done for a reason. If there were a screen on the end of the pen, this would cause glare and/or particles to be able to get on the screen and cause for a bad scan.
Ok, but how good does it scan?
When the C-Pen 600 is used correctly, it is 99 percent accurate. The OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software was written by C Technologies specifically for the C-Pen.
They also provide an add-on feature that will allow you to scan barcodes. The barcodes are completely configurable to anyone by using the SDK (Software Development Kit). This will allow you to tell the C-Pen what each barcode does (price, description, etc.).
You can then supply all your field technicians with one of these pens and they can scan the barcode on the computers they work on, the products they are servicing, etc.
Conclusion
It still did not dawn on my why I would want a C-Pen strapped to my side everyday of the week, until I experienced it. Living 50 miles from work, I usually live off of my debit card, and quite frequently my wife gets the opportunity to slap me around for losing one of my many receipts for the day. This pen could have possibly saved my life.
I now quickly scan the total line on the receipt. Each time I push the scan button on the pen; it automatically opens the last file that you had opened. This allows me to go home at the end of the day and turn on the pen and there it is, every total that I’ve had for the whole day.
I recommend the pens, especially to the new computer generation. They are easily programmable and easy to learn to use. I think they can make you life easier in a lot of different ways, at a price that’s not all to bad.
Recommended:
Yes
Interface: Don't know
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Epinions.com ID:
emcphers
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Member: Erik McPherson
Location: Preston, OK
Reviews written: 79
Trusted by: 52 members
About Me:
36 year old married father of 5 awesome kiddos, including a set of triplets.
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