Ectaco C-Pen 3.5 BT Bluetooth Handheld Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)After seeing all the positive and negative reviews for the Ectaco C-pen 20, I decided to take the dive and buy the Bluetooth version of Ectaco's handheld text scanner for my wife. I was apprehensive because there are no reviews for this product, but figured we could return the scanner if it didn't work.
My wife uses the scanner pen to scan text and notes from her law school classes. She stinks at typing, so being able to scan all the text she needs into her class outlines is a *huge* timesaver for her.
Caveats: we are on Vista as our operating system.
Pros:
Easy setup (make sure you follow the directions; DO NOT plug in the scanner prior to loading the software).
Scans accurately and quickly when plugged in via USB; see Cons for the story on Bluetooth mode.
Picks up the following kinds of text without problems: highlighted texts, text in books (make sure the pages are flat, though), or underlined text (provided your underline doesn't go through the text; see Cons)
Picks up kooky symbols, like the ones I found in some of my wife's textbooks (deltas, ampersands, etc.)
Cons:
Doesn't scan text well if you have underlined text and some of your underlining moves up through the printed text.
Doesn't scan very well in Bluetooth-only mode. Essentially, you have about 2-3 seconds to scan your line of text before the light on the scanner goes out and it transmits to your computer. I have no idea what the heck the deal is, but if the Bluetooth part of this scanner is really what you're looking for, I would recommend you *not* buy this product.
Scanner doesn't seem like the most well-constructed thing in the world, *but* it has held up well so far, so that might be a non-issue.
Overall: This text scanner does just fine when it's plugged in to the computer via USB cord. My wife really does save a lot of time in her studies. But, as I mentioned above, the Bluetooth really doesn't function very well at all. I originally gave this product 5 stars because it did exactly what it promised, but I'm changing my rating to (a very generous) 3 stars now that we've found out that the Bluetooth part of the show is so bad. Hopefully Ectaco will fix this in their next system update?

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