For Father's day last June, I got a LiveScribe Echo Smartpen. So I've been using it for about 5 months. I continue to use it, but on a scale of 1-10, I give it a 4.
It's a brilliant idea. I go to lots of meetings, and probably like you, I have been using traditional paper and pen for my notes. As life goes on, I've accumulated lots lof pads. I prefer paper books or journals with page numbers. When I am trapped in a boring meeting, I develop a table of contents for my books. It's worked well. The biggest drawback is finding old notes - from years ago - searching all the books.
Recently, I see people using their laptops or iPads to take notes. But that doesn't work for me. It's too much trouble and too slow. But the digital age is here and this Livescribe solultion looked interesting.
If you are not familiar with it - it's a special pen that, when combined with special paper, allows you to upload your notes to the computer. The notes can be anything - text, drawings, numbers. And it uploads exactly like it is written in the book. Other than the pen being a bit bulky, it's fairly natural to use. In fact, the actual use of the pen is pretty seamless. They did a good job of making it so I don't need to adapt my way of working to use their technology.
There are a few minor changes vs. traditional pen and paper. For one, you have to remember to turn the pen on. It's a large pen, with a small LCD screen. It has a huge pen cap - cover would be more accurate. You have to track that as its a separate piece and doesn't stick on the end or anything logical. There is no clip, so it can be pain to carry the pen around. You also have to use special paper, but the paper is decent, has page numbers, and is a reasonable price so no real complaints there.
While using the pen, there are some added features. You can record the audio, but I usually don't do that. There is a handy calculator available.. the keypad is on the pad of paper and the display is on the pen. Just tap the numbers and functions and see the display - clever.
The real magic comes in play after the notetaking - and that's where my complaints start. Not enough magic. The pen connects to the computer via USB and uploads notes and audio automatically to the app that needs to be installed. All the notes are there - magically. You can drag and drop them in virutal notebooks, you can print them, and well - that's about it. Actually, it's really disappointing. Here are some things that I think are missing:
- The date: The first date of ink on the page and the last date of ink on the page are hidden the properties. I would prefer dates and all the annotations (very rare for me) should be easily visible - and the notepad should sortable by dates.
- I can't add text or tags via the computer to the notes. The pages cannot be edited. See next point.
- Searching: I can search, but only via OCR based on what I wrote. I can't search based on criteria I may want to add. For example, if I drew a picture of a bench, the only way I could find it via search is if I neatly wrote "bench" under the picture. I don't write neat and I may not want that word under my picture. I want to be able to add tags to each page. Maybe "park" or "bus" - I might want to note who was with me when we discussed it, etc. Livescribe thinks if it wasn't written with the pen - how can be it be important.
- There is a clever feature called pencasting. This allows you to record (audio and pen) a session and then post the page as a film of sorts. But rather than start with a blank page - all the writing is visible, just not darkened. As you play the recording, the text darkens. It is really annoying. I think there may be a way to turn that off, but I can't figure it out.
- The pen quality is not great. It has a metal band that feels cheap. When you run your finger over it, it isn't smooth. The ink quality is low. I use both sides of the spiral pages (as they are numbered), but for some reason the pen doesn't work well on the backside of the pages.
Bottom line is this thing has a lot of potential. I continue to use it, but so far have not benefited from its capabilities. I am on my 2nd notebook. I can't find things eaiser. I continue to use it because I assume the software will get better. Now that I own it, there are few disadvantages - or benefits - to using it.
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