Though there are a huge number of scanners that will take a copy of a document, few will produce a document that can then be edited in a word processor. For that you need OCR-optical character recognition, and that is exactly what the IRISPen Executive 6 pen does.
After a few minutes spent reading the manual the pen was tried. Out of the box it didn’t work great, but it turned out to be a user error-namely that the arrow wasn’t properly lined up and that the light wasn’t staying on all of the time because the pen wasn’t being pressed down hard enough.
As with any [ReviewAZON_Tooltip asin=”integrated” titlewordcount=”3″]OCR device[/ReviewAZON_Tooltip], this isn’t 100% perfect even for an established user. There are occasional errors that need to be corrected, most commonly with punctuation or other symbols. Yet when compared to having to type up the writing yourself, making the corrections is very fast, and when using it to just allow you to have a copy of your notes, the corrections aren’t completely necessary.
Errors were more frequent when scanning text from books, and the thinner the pages the higher the rate of errors was. The error rate could be reduced a little by inserting a plain white piece of paper in between the pages of the book. It seems possible that the text on the page underneath interferes a little with the text you are trying to read and using a sheet of white paper cuts down on that interference. Black and white text works best, with other colors giving a higher error rate.
Errors also occurred more often when trying to scan too quickly. There is a degree of skill needed for accurate scanning, with it seeming to take a little practice before the results are reliable. You need to have the scanner tip lined up well with the text, and not to move the scanner too quickly. It is still quicker than doing the typing yourself, but going too fast means that you tend to get a lot of errors that then need to be corrected.
Amazingly, the IRISPen also does handwriting recognition, though the error rate is higher than for printed text. With clear, printed handwriting the success rate is higher, giving good motivation to keep your handwriting clear. This feature is particularly useful when it comes to converting notes taken in class or in meetings into a form that is computer editable. Typing up your notes can take a long time by comparison, where as this is almost instant.
[ReviewAZON_Tooltip asin=”integrated” titlewordcount=”3″]IRISPen[/ReviewAZON_Tooltip] also works on receipts, making it ideal for use at tax time, and also works on bar codes, allowing you to document your purchases in a way that will help you to reorder easily in the future.
Though it is not without its teething problems, the IRISPen is an incredible scanning device, capable of giving incredibly mobile scanning too. It is small and light and very easy to use once you have given it a little practice, and will really lighten the workload of any office that does a lot of data entry.
