I can’t stand the Docupen personally. Not clean enough scans for my taste.

I’ve been using the scanner today and it is great as a portable solution, scanning in the bits of paper that you come across during the day. I wouldn’t recommend it for scanning in text books, though. I think you will want something faster and that work with the binding issues.

I’ll be blogging more about it later this week as I use it more.

Mike, I only use the Tablet at home. I have a docking station with a full suite of peripherals that connect to it.

James, do you also own a desktop at home? Or do you use your tablet as your desktop at home?

Mike

Nick, the OptiBook is the ultimate solution for scanning in books. I don’t think you want to do major scanning projects with a portable scanner like the DocuPen.

Matt, I find PDF Annotator to be a great solution for annotating PDF documents so I have not tried any other solution. I do not use a stand for the tc1100. I find it small and light enough that I can either hold it or set it on the conference table when making notes. I wouldn’t want to carry a stand around with me anyway.

James, great article. I’m really looking forward to the follow up articles. I’m curious to know if there are any software packages out there, besides PDF Annotator, that will allow me to annotate documents. Also, on days when you’re not using the tc1100 with the keyboard attached, do you use a stand of any sort, and if so, who makes it? I’m finding that I carry my tablet around with me at all times, and often without the keyboard. I need a stand for it, maybe like the one for the U Series (the case with the stand built-in).

James, thanks for the interesting and helpful post. I look forward to the hardware and software follow-on articles.

In the meantime, I have a question. Do you know of any reviews on the Docupen RC800? I know Rob Bushway has said he would review his after he has used it for awhile, but as far as I know he hasn’t blogged anything yet.

My interest is that I am another student trying to go paperless and I can’t decide if I should purchase an Optibook 3600 or the Docupen RC800 (I can’t afford both). My primary need is for a system to scan my books into pdf+text format. As a second goal, I’m also trying to implement a GTD general reference filing system that is as digital as I can make it (must include OCR of the majority of scanned documents).

For these needs, the proven Optibook solution would certainly suffice (for items that I can bring home and scan). However, if the RC800 will do book scanning and OCR as quickly and accurately as the Optibook, then I would definitely prefer to spend the extra money and get a scanner I can easily carry around with me to have on hand when I need it.

If you have any information that is not readily available or that I may have overlooked, especially if it specifically addresses the question of whether the RC800 is an adequate replacement for the Optibook for making pdf+text documents, I would sure appreciate if you shared it. Thanks.