WizCom QuickLink Pen Handheld Scanner

• Fully portable handheld pen scanner
• Scans full lines of text in 8 languages
• Stores up to 1,000 pages of text
• Transfers text to PC, laptop, PDA, or cellular phone
• Supports memory upgrades

Amazon.com Review:
Handheld scanners are a convenient way to get printed text into an editable format on your computer, but the best devices are prohibitively expensive. Wizcom has bucked this trend with its aggressively priced QL-1000, which has more features than some products that sell for twice as much. In our tests, we found the interface tough to learn and navigate, and editing text that's stored in the pen was a chore. However, with practice, we were able to scan pages of text with great accuracy. An attractive feature of the QuickLink is that you don't need to hold down a button while you scan text. The device can "see" text and automatically activate the scanner when text comes into its field of view. Then, you only have to roll the pen smoothly over the line you want to capture and lift it off the page at the end of the text line. The optical character recognition (OCR) engine then translates the scanned images into editable text. The QuickLink was as accurate as any similar device we've tested, but still far from perfect. The OCR process also took longer than it did with other products we've tested in this category. Still, these minor deficiencies are more than offset by the device's useful software tools, which, for example, let us send scanned Internet links directly to our PC's Web browser and quickly create an address book by scanning business cards. The QuickLink is less expensive than many of the products it competes against directly, making it a great buy if you need a handheld scanner. --T. Byrl Baker Pros: Great accuracy with a little practice No need to hold a button while scanning Comes with great software and built-in tools Cons: Cumbersome interface Editing text is a frustrating process

Throwing money away:
This is one of the worst gadgets (if you could call it that) I have ever bought in my life. It is totally useless. Yes, I could scan, but I have spent 5 hours trying to get it to communicate with my computer. The program does not even attempt to communicate. I am now sending it back. You would be better off throwing your money out of the window. At least someone could pick it up and use it for something worthwhile.

It works, but very slowly:
I bought and used the pen for a while just to see if I liked the system. It does work as advertised, but it is too slow to really be of any use. A better choice would be to save the money and spend it on omnipage. I priced things after using the pen and realized that I could buy a better scanner 9x12" with omnipage for under $90. Even the lite version that came with the scanner is better then the pen. I was able to resell the pen to someone else since I had no use for it.

great for researchers:
The wizcom scanning pen is great for people who do a lot of reading and need to save 1-10 line passages every page or two. It would be nice if the scanning accuracy were always 100% (I use foreign languages that have different characters thrown in sometimes) but it still saves enormous amounts of time since I don't have to type what I want into my laptop meaning I'm free to keep my eyes on the text without distraction. If you don't care to have your laptop with you, just take the pen and store all the info to transfer over to your PC later. If you want you can scan directly into your computer. I often scan directly into a little notecard program which means once I've finished my article or whatever. All my notes are saved together and are searchable. If you need to search for elements of text this is very handy. It's good for humanities people like myself though I do think improving the technology could always continue.

Wiz- Com: Over- Hype, Under- Deliver:
Wiz- Com was one of the 1st to come out w/ a handheld pen scanner, and the idea is great... The sell- point for me was convenience and the thought that I would be able to speed up processing data for school. Unfortunately, the software app. for this scanner sucked, the interface was a total pain in the a** to get functioning correctly, and text- editing was a nightmare. I ended up wasting more time trying to get it to work than it was worth. Total waste of my time and money. Save your $$$ and wait until better models come out in the future. This was a case of rushing a great idea to market before the technology was ready for consumer application.

Device Fine, Software lousy:
I found the scan effectiveness worthy of praise, but trying to get the content to my laptop unbearable. The software wouldn't install well or access the scanned text on my Win XP laptop, or my Win2000 laptop, and when I went to my old Win98 laptop it worked fine...albiet with a lame interface. And then, when I deleted the desktop software from Win98 system, the OS got smeared and now only fires up in "Safe Mode". Again, the optics work fine, no complaints at all, but the software is puke.