7. Results Of The Docupen R 700 In Practice: Accurate But Relatively Slow

• DocuPen DPEN-R700 Pen...
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To test the scanner in as realistic a setting as possible, it was our constant companion for the last eight weeks. Almost every printed page we came across got the scan treatment, including newspaper articles, recipes from magazines, technical diagrams from books and even restaurant tabs.

The basis for an objective test result was formed by two one-page text documents containing just fewer than 1,300 characters, which we filled with various typefaces and sizes. We also used two full-page ads in magazines as a sample. One of the ads shows a Breitling watch and an airplane. The other was a mishmash of small ads from schools offering MBA courses.

To judge the detail optically, we also scanned in a block diagram and a technical diagram for good measure.

Not surprisingly, depending on the image content and the scan resolution, the Docupen R700's page capacity varies from one extreme to the other. Our test revealed that more than 80 one-page text documents can be stored in the little pen scanner's 2 MB of memory. If you want to pass the documents through an OCR program later, its storage capacity is reduced by more than half because of the higher scanner resolution needed.

The built-in OCR engine in Paperport scored really good hit rates in our tests. However, the program cannot be tweaked at all and for this reason alone it has to take second place behind dedicated OCR applications. The error frequency jumps dramatically at type sizes less than 8 points. We found that you should always make a point of scanning at the 200 dpi resolution. The final result naturally also depends on how evenly you draw the Docupen over the document. If you only need to scan texts for filing then 100 dpi does the job fine. The software has a far easier time of it recognizing Sansserif typefaces like Verdana than it does with a font like Times New Roman.

The Docupen is ideal for scanning in line drawings and technical diagrams. At the high resolution of 200 x 200 dpi even fine details are recognizable. But as a purely black-and-white scanner, the device is not at all suited for photos.

All in order: The top picture shows the result with a flatbed scanner, to the right of it the same with the Docupen

Out of order: The top picture shows the gray-scale scan with a flatbed scanner, below it the same with the Docupen