( 3 reviews )
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Posted: Oct 10 2008
For a long time, I've been using the free barcode font free3of9.ttf (which can be download freely at many websites), and it works very well for me at size 18 points. Last week, I just bought a baracoda pencil2 and anxiously tried it with the barcodes printed from free3of9 font. I found out that it can read the size 18 but with difficulty, sometimes I had to re-scan several times. Further testing, I found out sometimes it could read size 17, but anything smaller is un-readable because these barcodes are too densely printed. Searching around Internet for other free barcode fonts, I found another free font from IDAAutomation which can be read at size 8, but even at 8 points, this font is too tall and it has alphabetical caption at the bottom which I don't like. Finally, I found another free font at zbausa.com, Baracoda can read it at size 10 and the font is not tall which serves my need. Summary: Baracoda can read these free barcode fonts, but you have to find the correct font size for each font. The point size of these free fonts does not follow any standard. 18 point in this font maybe has equal dimension as 8 point in another font, etc... and it also varies in height, wide, density, etc... you've to try each font at different sizes to find the best values in each font that can be read easily by Baracoda.
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Posted: May 20 2008
I bought this scanner to pair with my windows mobile 6 professional device. I spend much of a day attempting to get it to work properly and it never happened. First of all, the baracoda website did not even have software on their site for windows mobile 6. I had to call and tech support emailed me a beta program with quite a few bugs. I did find the gentleman at tech support to be patient and helpful, but we never truly worked anything out. Once the scanner was connected to my device, it would not really read any barcodes but a few and then it submitted over 5 numbers instead of actually reading the barcode. The Pencil 2 never read a bar code on a CD which is why I purchased it. Unlike the other reviewer, I thought the best part of this scanner was the Stylus function. It was not perfect but it worked and would have worked very well if I could have ever got the scanner to work properly. Needless to say, I am returning the product for a refund.
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( 4 of 4 found this review helpful ) Posted: Sep 5 2007
The bluetooth works very well. I had no problem pairing the Pencil2 to my Nokia N800 and to my Sony Vaio laptop. The barcode scanning is rather sub-par. Many densely printed barcodes require multiple scans to register, some are never read. An inexpensive Metrologic scanner had no problem with those. The touted use as a stylus is somewhat marred by the very short point on a wide body - edges of the screen are not accessible, otherwise it is quite handy. The (Windows only) software that comes with it is rather poor, the upgrade available on Baracoda site is effectively broken. The tech support is nonexistent, as in no answer to e-mails. The support and an upgrade of firmware are realy needed, because Pencil2 forgets the settings on wake-up. If you want a CR suffix, you get to scan the setup barcodes from the programming manual every time the device wakes up. I use the Pencil2 to scan internally printed barcodes and to capture signatures. It performs those functions very well.
