Handheld scanners have been around for a while. The first incarnations were paintbrush-style devices, which rolled over documents to scan the images. Now there are also pen scanners, which allow you to scan individual lines of text.

The DocuPen blends the two ideas and allows you to scan pages of text by vertically dragging the device over a piece of paper.

It's a little longer than a pen and comes with a tight-fitting cover. The only control on the Docupen is a single button to turn it on and to switch between two quality settings. It's pretty simple to use; press the button and move the pen over the surface of the page you wish to scan. A light warns you if you move too fast.

Depending on the quality, you can store between 12 and 25 pages of text. It connects to your computer (and recharges) via USB 2 and it is quick to transfer images across. It comes with the excellent ScanSoft PaperPort OCR software, which automatically converts your scans into editable text.

As the Docupen is only designed for text, it can only scan in black and white, so it's not much good for scanning photos. It's not cheap either, and you can buy desktop scanners that offer far more versatility for a third of the price. But for students scanning library books or other forms of portable scanning, this is a good device.

Contact:
Planon (no UK number)
www.planon.com