COMPUTER - PERIPHERALS - 20.01.2010

Using a special pen

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen

Listen to your notes. The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen (http://www.livescribe.com/uk) writes like an ordinary ink pen. At the same time, it records the background sound as well - its motto is “never miss a word”. When clicking somewhere in your notes later (for instance, a sentence or a chart), the pen will replay what was said at that exact moment. So if you can’t decipher your handwriting, you can relisten to what the speaker actually said during the meeting. This tool is therefore ideal for meetings, although it can also be helpful for your children at school/university. The audio quality was excellent during our tests, and you can adjust the settings to your specific wishes. The pen comes with earplugs guaranteeing optimum sound quality.

Special paper. For this pen to work, it should be used on special stationery. The paper consists of small dots which establish the link between the “location” of your notes and the exact moment the sound is recorded. The notebook contains two sheets showing the “basics”: this helps you to discover all the possibilities quickly. Conveniently, there are several clickable icons at the bottom of each sheet which can be used for controlling the pen. For instance, there are Record and Playback icons, whilst other icons let you adjust the playing speed and the volume.

To your computer. The supplied software lets you transfer all your notes to your hard disk via USB and save them locally. Here again, when you click on a scribble with the mouse pointer, the accompanying audio is played automatically.

Tip. A search field lets you look up specific words in the written text. This search function performed excellently during our tests - even with our not very legible handwriting.

Price. This Livescribe Pulse Smartpen costs £149.99 (including notepad). Separate notepads cost £9.99 for 400 sheets.

C-Pen 20

Digital highlighter. The C-Pen 20 (http://www.cpen.com) has a different purpose. This pen resembles a marker and has been developed to scan bits of text. The broad point of the C-Pen should be moved over the text, as if you were highlighting a passage. Admittedly, it took several attempts before we succeeded in making the pen move in a straight line and at an even speed over the text. But then, practice makes perfect. Note. You obviously can’t use the C-Pen 20 for writing in ink.

To your computer. In contrast to the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, the C-Pen 20 should always be connected to your computer via USB, since it has no internal memory. Anything you scan will be transferred to your computer immediately, and it’s inserted at the exact location of the mouse cursor in any application that is currently running. This makes it child’s play to paste, for example, a newspaper article into your current Word document. Thanks to the built-in OCR technology, you can also edit the scanned text in your word processor.

Price. The basic C-Pen 20 costs £80.

Tip.I.R.I.S. (http://www.irislink.com - Products; Pen scanners.) produce similar pens. These cost about £120.