SemperAptus.com - Capshare 920 (Review)

Secret agents around the world need to make room in their black bag for an amazing new piece of equipment. The CapShare 920 is an electronic device that’s smaller than a paperback book (4.1” x 5.5” by 1.5” and weighs 12.5 ounces) and can scan an entire page of text and images as fast as you can swipe it over the page. Once you have scanned it into the CapShare, you can wirelessly transfer the image to anything from printers, to desktop computers, PDAs, and even a cell phone.

And if you think it is too “cloak and dagger” to have any real world uses, think again. During my extended review of the device, I found myself scanning receipts for my expense reports, magazine/newpaper articles for my family, business cards that I knew I would lose, paper forms to fill out electronically, phone book listings, legal documents I signed, and even large flip charts from company meetings. In fact, this device has become such a part of my daily routine that, when someone makes a handwritten change to a document, I’ve rushed back to my office to grab the CapShare, so I can make a copy of their changes.

If you’re like me, you are probably wondering how a handheld device can copy a page that is over 13 square feet in size. To explain it on a smaller scale; if you wanted to copy this page out of our magazine, you’d simply place the CapShare on the upper-left corner of the page, swipe it all the way to the bottom, move it over to the right, then swipe back up to the top. This U shape movement over the page allows you to get an entire 8 ½ inches of page content with the CapShare’s 5 inch scanner surface. The only hitch is that the device requires that you overlap ½ inch on every pass so it knows where to paste the pieces together. If your document is larger than a piece of paper, you can simply repeat the U-shaped path as many times as you want. And once you’ve got the data into your CapShare, you’ll be amazed with all the things you can do with it.

The CapShare device is compatible with Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/CE, EPOC32 (Psion Series 5) and even the Nokia 9000i/9000il/9110 Communicator (with the Infrared Object Exchange application installed). A serial cable is provided for connection to your desktop computer, but uses its infrared port for connecting to all the other devices. The 920 has support for both Fast Infrared (FIR) and Serial Infrared (SIR). FIR is available on newer laptop PCs and printers and allows a transmission time of up to 4 megabytes per second, transferring a letter-size page in 5-15 seconds. The older Serial IR format transfers at 115Kbps and takes 15-30 seconds per page. In addition to providing these data transfer estimates, HP reports that multiple pages sent at one time will transmit faster over either IR format. HP calls the transfer technology “JetSend”, and claims that there are over 5 million JetSend-enabled devices already in use today.

With all these different places to send your CapShare documents, you can imagine the possibilities HP has provided for working with them. When you transfer a document to any Windows-based computer, the documents can be stored as PDF (Adobe’s Portable Document Format) or TIF (a standard graphics file format). PDF should be your file type of choice if you plan on E-mailing the document to other users, as most people have Adobe Acrobat reader installed on their system. The TIF file format is available to users of graphics and OCR (optical character recognition) applications that want to convert the file to text for editing or pasting into a document. We applaud HP’s support for both PDF and TIF file formats, as they are two of the most common formats for transferring document and image data.

On a Psion, or Windows CE device, the document is transferred as a TIF file. HP offers a free version of JetSend for Windows CE (see sidebar for a description and an actual screenshot of a scanned document) that allows you to receive, view and annotate documents received from CapShare. Finally, sending a document to a Nokia Communicator allows you to wirelessly fax or E-mail the document anywhere in the world.

If you haven’t impressed your friends with the CapShare’s incredible communications capability by this point, here is an easy way to win them over. Grab someone’s document, swipe the CapShare over the page, then press the yellow “transfer” button twice. Point it at almost any printer with IRDA infrared and - poof! The document comes out of the printer in near copy machine quality (well above fax quality). In my un-scientific in office tests, 10 out of 10 co-workers were very impressed with this “insta-copy” capability and inquired about the device.

The device comes with 4MB of memory, which can store up to 150 pages of flip chart data in compressed mode, up to 50 letter-size documents in normal mode, or 15 pages in graphics (high quality) mode. Two fully charged NiMH batteries (4 are included with the device) can copy and send 100 letter-sized, normal mode pages. Also included with the device is a compact NiMH battery charger, serial cable, capture sleeve, soft cloth carrying pouch, user guide and a software CD.

HP has done an excellent job of making the CapShare 920 easy-to-use. Simply turn it on, lower the device onto the page, press the scan button, and swipe. In a few seconds, the scanned document appears on the screen and four buttons allow you to view, rotate, send or delete it. The device has four directional arrow buttons for navigating around a document, a tools button with document capture and editing utilities and a help button to provide you with on-device assistance for most tasks. Once you familiarize yourself with what each button’s function is, you’ll have no problem with working with the 920.

Scanning a document, however, does require a little more practice. The U shape swipe is easy to do on a letter-sized document, but on pages larger than 8 ½” wide, we found that overlapping each swipe quite a bit ensures that you don’t lose your place. In addition, the CapShare can not handle scanning on uneven surfaces, so a bump in the page, will require you to start over again. When it comes to scanning speed, however, the CapShare is top notch. We found that the device could keep up with our fastest realistic U-shaped swipe, only giving up when we ran it so ridiculously fast down the page, we could barely keep the device in our hands (HP does recommend that you take 3 seconds to scan a page and probably wouldn’t approve our “speed demon” test).

HP, in their marketing documentation, says it best; “It’s the copier you take to the paper”. After using the device for nearly a month, we couldn’t agree more. While the company has selected legal, insurance, finance and business consultant markets as their primary targets for this device, students, people in collaborative meetings and anyone who works extensively with paper documents will find this device absolutely invaluable. And while the cost (US$499) is high, and the device does take some getting used to, once you get in the swing of things, you’ll wonder how you ever worked without it.

Follow up: JetSend for Windows CE
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