Livescribe 8 GB Echo Smartpen

In my line of work (Theoretical Physics) I tend to write a lot, mostly mathematical formulae, graphs and other non-standard material. This tends to create piles of papers, and getting it all organized can be a challenge. I tried using tablet PCs in the past, but the buggy software and the small, unresponsive, screen could not match the experience and effortlessness of writing on the real paper. There had been some electronic-paper solutions over the years, but they all had many flaws that made them unappealing to me. That’s why I got really excited when I found out about LiveScribe. Unlike all the other solutions out there for digital note taking, with LiveScribe you actually use real paper and real (albeit technologically advanced) pen. There is no learning curve for using the system for the basic note-taking, and all the more advanced features are easy to learn after just a very short tutorial. The pen works with special software that imports all of your files (both your writing and the audio recordings) onto your computer. The files are in a special format that can be shared online through LiveScribe’s community websites, and thus it is easy to share your notes with others who might be interested. The written files can also be saved in .pdf format, and can thus be shared with an even wider audience. In fact, that way they can even be incorporated in PowerPoint or similar presentations. The desktop software can be easily installed on both Mac and Windows computers.

The pen fits pretty naturally in your hand, and it’s very easy to use. It is much larger than a regular pen, but it actually fits rather comfortably in your hand. In fact, it is probably more ergonomically kind to your hand than a regular pen.

The in-pen software is pretty cool. Your LiveScribe pen can read out what you had written, and even translate limited vocabulary into several other languages. Since I had bought the pen LiveScribe has opened their platform to the outside developers, so it is likely that we’ll see many more interesting programs that take advantage of this remarkable pen.

In order for LiveScribe pen to work you need to buy notebooks that have been lined up with a special pattern. The paper in these notebooks looks just like any other regular paper to the naked eye, but if you look really closely you would be able to notice a minuscule pattern on all the pages. This pattern gets recognized by an infrared camera in the pen, and this is in fact the way that the pen recognizes and records what is being written. This is an amazing technological trick, but a slight downside is that you need to keep buying only notebooks that are patterned in this special way. The notebooks tend to be quite a bit more expensive than the regular notebooks, but overall they have totally been worth the investment for me. The combination of the pen and the notebooks is definitely much, much cheaper than all the alternatives, and it is way more effective and convenient as well.

The pen also needs special cartridges, and from what I have experienced thus far one cartridge does not last too long, especially as compared to the regular pens. However, I still find this to be a minor annoyance compared to all the benefits of LiveScribe system.

One day we may truly have a real electronic paper with all the look and feel of the regular paper, plus all the convenience and power of using a digital format to store your creative and other information. Until then, LiveScribe pen and paper are the best products out there that help you with these goals. I have been extremely satisfied with them thus far.

 

 

Bojan Tunguz

Bojan Tunguz was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which he and his family fled during the civil war for the neighboring Croatia. Over the past two decades he has studied, lived and worked in the United States. He is a theoretical physicist with degrees from Stanford and University of Illinois. Tunguz has taught physics at several prominent liberal arts colleges and has been writing about physics, science and technology for more than a decade. He also has a wide spectrum of interests, and reads and writes about current events, society, culture, religion and politics. Over the years he has reviewed many of the books that he has read, and posted his reviews on various online outlets. In 2011 he had become a top 10 reviewer on Amazon.com, where he continues to be very active. Aside from reading and writing, Tunguz enjoys traveling, digital photography, hiking, and fitness. He resides with his wife in Indiana. You can follow my review updates on the following pages as well: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tunguzreview Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tunguzreviews Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104312842297641697463/posts

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