Evaluation:     
Conclusion: Fantastic Scanner Review: I work at the courthouse and their is a line for the copier. I am able to finish twice as much work as before with this pen. If you do not need to copy color pages then definately would get the black and white. It works great on low resolution. I am the envy of the courthouse.
Evaluation:     
Conclusion: It works until the battery doesn't recharge anymore... Review: A very cool gadget, and no complaints about the scanning itself. Great images. Very true scanning, and easy to do.
The unit I received was odd. The first issue was cosmetic quality control. There was surplus cellophane tape on the lens which I had to carefully remove. The cloth "bumpers" on the ends of the lens promptly came off, revealing sloppy glueing of the case. These things should have tipped me off to structural difficulties to come. I'm an optimist, though, and continued to use the scanner past the warranty end date.
I didn't use the unit for a few months after the initial receipt. By then the internal battery would no longer recharge. Since the battery is a specialty unit soldered onto the scanner's circuit board and therefore not user replaceable, I am now stuck, out of warranty and only able to use the unit when it is attached to a power souce via its USB cord. Planon advises they can "fix" it for me, but at a cost of @ $150.00. Ugh.
I have just discovered that a travel USB/AC charger will power the unit so that it will work. At least I don't have to have a computer at hand to scan now, though I will still need a wall receptacle nearby. A small improvement, but overall a disappointment.
I could give this product a shining recommendation if only the internal rechargable battery were easily replaceable by the consumer.
Evaluation:     
Conclusion: Just awful! Review: It's terrible. If I knew how it would be I would not have bought it. Unacceptable even if it were a lot cheaper!
I didn't expect much quality for a scanner this size, but the image quality is so low that documents are unreadable sometimes. Scan speed is slow, and you have to wait for it to store the scan in memory (about 15-20 seconds per full-color page) before scanning another page.
Forget about the internal memory, which can barely hold 2 full-page color scans, you have to have a memory card (used Kingston 2GB micro-sd and it worked ok, despite the warning that only Sandisk memory chips would work). But the card is not formatted in a standard way, so you can't put it in a card reader to transfer images, and have to wait the incredibly slow transfer through the non-standard USB cable (I thought the connector on the device end would be mini-usb, but it's a proprietary connector). I had to wait about 15-20min for 16 color pages before I could even see the image thumbnails.
I bought it for work so that I could scan documents, both for reference and to print them later with my reports, but the scanned documents' quality is so poor I don't feel it's worth printing them, whether scanned in b/w, half-color or full-color. You would be better off just photographing the documents with a digital camera, which is a lot faster...
Evaluation:     
Conclusion: Company needs to improve this neat idea .... stopped working Review: This product was nice for the first 20 or so pages and then it just stop working and there customer service is a joke this product is a good idea but needs major improvement for what were paying it needs alot of improvement. I have warned you all about my experience the decision is yours.
Evaluation:     
Conclusion: Works great, after an ordeal! Review: When I first got my RC800, I was underwhelmed by the build quality--it seems cheap and flimsy, with terrible fit and finish. Still, it seems to hold up fine under use, and it hasn't broken yet.
At first, I had a terrible time using this thing--my scans were coming out crooked, the "Too Fast" light blinked all the time, and the scans would finish prematurely, before the entire page had been scanned in. The resulting scans were unusable, and I almost returned the scanner.
Recalibrating the RC800 fixed all of that and turned the scanner into a terrific little tool. It took a while to do the recalibration, which was somewhat confusing because the scanner would finish way before the end of the calibration page, but I finally got it right with 100% accuracy. After that, the scanner works flawlessly, allowing for an uneven scanning speed and scanning full pages completely. I've gotten into the flow of using the device, which while not fast, isn't too slow either. I can easily scan page after page with a single pass each, and the OVERALL speed is actually better than flatbed scanners where I have to open the lid, replace pages, position the page, all before actually making the scan.
The trade-off in portability and compactness makes this a wonderful scanner to have--I'm used to having relatively large flatbeds take up a bunch of shelf space, and this is a joy to store.
As for the software complaints, I didn't have any trouble with the latest drivers (for both Mac and PC, which I both tested). Sure, there are the usual "Not Digitally-Signed" errors under WinXP and the drivers themselves are somewhat clunky to use, but it all works reliably as promised in the documentation. If you require elegance, this isn't the scanner for you. But then again, I've never had an elegant scanner experience with all of the dozens of scanners I've used EXCEPT the giant multifunction copiers that are capable of scanning to email or network drive.
If you aren't particularly techie in nature or are rough on your equipment, this probably isn't the scanner for you. Otherwise, this is perfect for low-volume, space-constrained, or portable scanning.
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