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Review
Created:
March, 2000
If you've ever wished that you could just whisk a page of text from a page to the screen but had to type it out, there's a three letter acronym you need to learn: OCR.
That's Optical Character Recognition, which means the process by which a machine reads text off a page and turns it into editable text in on a computer. Scanner software does this quite effectively, but for small chunks of text, it's often too much effort to go to the trouble.
Enter the IRISPen, a hand-held OCR device that is designed to read text off a page with a quick swipe of a wand-like device over the desired printed words.
Beyond simple OCR functionality, the IRISPen's accompanying software allows an upgrade for voice synthesis, so recognized text can be read over a computer's speakers. Another upgrade called the IRISTranslator also does on-the-fly text translation between English and French. Bi-directional translation software is also available between English and German, Spanish and Italian. English to Japanese translation is unidirectional.
The translation function is not perfect (English to French was tested), though the company stresses that translation is design to aid a translator or traveler and is not meant to offer perfect translation.
The pen device itself is the size of a chocolate bar and attaches to both the printer parallel port and a keyboard PS/2 input. The latter is to draw power for the device. It accomplishes this with pass-through technology that allows a printer and keyboard to attach to the ports at the same time. This clutters the back of the computer somewhat, but is effective.
Installation can potentially be a bit of a chore, with a change of BIOS settings (a computer's technical settings accessible at boot up) required on some machines to allow the IRISPen to communicate with the PC.
Once it's working, it is quite a clever device. The user simply rolls the nib of the pen across a line of text or a bar code and it is captured in the program that is on-screen or in the Windows clipboard.
The text scanning takes an even hand swiping at a constant speed. The software corrects for some unsteadiness, though uncoordinated users will be frustrated.
The pen's shape is awkward and would be better if it was more pen-shaped and less rectangular, but you can get used to it. The pen recognizes text as large at 22 point and can filter unwanted characters or "see" only alphanumeric or numeric characters. An upgrade to the IRISPen Executive package recognizes bar codes or hand printing.
The basic package can also be customized to replace or omit characters or read white characters on a black background. There's also a mode to scan small black and white images.
When an OCR training mode is set, the PC will prompt you when it doesn't' recognize a character and will remember your choices the next time it encounters a problem character. This slows the process down, but is valuable if you put the time into teaching the system.
Downsides include the inability to print while scanning, though a hot key can be configured to toggle between the scanning and print mode.
It's easy to love the intent of the IRISPen. When it works, it's a marvelous feature-rich device, but some fundamental design flaws like the bulkiness of the pen make it unfulfilling. The clip-on battery pack makes it portable from a power perspective but not useful, as it has to remain wired to a computer. The software comes on floppy disks, which is unnecessary in the age of CD-ROM drives. Also, all the documentation is geared for Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Even the support documentation on the company's Web site seems to have been written in 1997.
A redesign and update of the product with the addition of Universal Serial Bus connectivity would improve the package. But if someone comes along with a better product, this one doesn't stand a chance.
Reviewer's rating: 3 / 5
Comments: Intelligent features don't make up for the poor design and lagging technology on the IRISPen, but if you need the scanning or translation options it offers, it may interest you nonetheless.
Platform: Mac, Windows 3.x/95/98/NT
More info: http://www.irislink.com
System
Requirements: Macintosh -- Mac with a 68040 or 68LC040 processor and 3 MB free RAM, MacOS Power PC computers with 3.5 MB free RAM, MacOS System 7.0 or higher. PC -- Windows, 386 processor and 4 MB of RAM or minimum operating system requirements.
More info: http://www.irislink.com/
Prices:
IRISPen 3.2: $199 US, $280 Canadian
IRISPen Translator: $249 US, $350 Canadian
IRISPen Executive: $299 US, $420 Canadian
IRISPen NT 3.6: $299, $420 Canadian
IRISPen Mac 3.0: $249, $350 Canadian
IRISPen Mac Executive: $299, $420 Canadian
Software-only upgrades also available.
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Adding RAM is easy, 