RSS
Home
Technology not ready for prime Time: the IO 2 digital Pen
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The IO Pen 2 photo K. von Behrmann
There are technologies that sound great, at least theoretically. On paper, these types of developments appear to fill a real need. The big obstacle to these ideas from being successful is that there is always some practical element that puts a real damper on the wide scale adoption of these emerging wonders. Ultimately the device and/or software is intriguing, but still a miss fire not a bull’s eye hit.
One glaring example of this “almost made it tech” is the IO 2 digital pen. The notion of a pen that can store written data that can then be downloaded to your computer and then rendered digital and editable is a great idea. The only problems stem from the limitations of the technology.
For years we have heard of the paperless office. Well, hold on to that dream because it hasn’t happed yet, and may not . Until digital technology becomes truly wide spread, I mean wide spread like every body walking has one, notes on paper are still viable. Even in the most high tech world, a scribbled note still has value.
The digital pen promised the convenience of note taking with the efficiency of computing. The promise was so compelling that Logitech developed not one, but two, digital pens. The culmination of their efforts was the Logitech IO 2 Pen. Slightly larger than your average marking pen, it permitted you to download, store and edit what was held by the pen’s memory—that roughly translated to about ten written pages more or less—to your computer, windows only.
The big “caveat” to this was that you needed “special “ paper to make the magic happen. This particular brand of paper had to be purchased. Try though you may, and I did, there was no way to print this paper yourself on your home printer. While some have claimed success, what I would up with was a page filled with dots that were completely indecipherable to the pen. In order for the pen to comprehend what you compose, paper piled with mini shadow dots are needed to store information.
The utilization of specially dotted paper, which was not that readily available, and the cost, the pen was not exactly price point friendly at over $ 200.00 when it was introduced ( you can still purchase the pen and the cost is about $ 215.00 give or take a few dollars), and suddenly the pen came with some serious operating costs.
Factoring in the cost of the special paper, roughly about $ 10.00 for a 20 page pad, the operating cost of the pen becomes a real deal breaker. Compounding that, the pen can only hold, at maximum, ten pages. Some owners claimed it could hold only six pages.
For classroom lectures where pages can top 10 to 20 easily, space becomes a problem. To be truly effective for intensive lecturing, one needed to have a lap top near to download and reload, which defeats the purpose of the pen offering portability until you can dock and unload your pen’s content.
Yet another problematic area was translating your handwriting into something the computer can digitize. Unless you print when you write, expect more than a few typos and major edits to turn your handwritten text into something a word processor can handle.
As good and solid an idea as the IO 2 was, and is, the technology seemed to doom. While the need for a device like this exists, and clearly Logitech, a company well known for some well designed great high quality products, felt a need to invest in the technology, a need was clearly perceived.
Unfortunately, after two versions, Logitech exited the whole pen business handing over development to Destiny. Now available only in European markets and no longer under the Logitech name, the pen is still alive, but in a different guise.
Currently, other companies have produced similar objects that have added other programs, voice recording and such, the technology still has limits and the problems encountered by the IO 2 are reflective of a technology that appeared truly visionary but in the end was handicapped by practical concerns.
If there is a lesson in this it is that technology that ignores the real world winds up being a novelty. However, without those leaps, and trials and errors technology never ventures forward.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
